The Family Game

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

A high 2 stars. Fun to read, but in the end, not worth the effort!

This is an incredibly slow and sometimes choppy book. The story starts and stops a lot. Nothing really happens and while there is an attempt made at building some kind of tension, it sadly doesn't succeed at all. At no point did the text convey the feeling of danger the protagonist was apparently experiencing.

This very messy family wasn't as fun as it could have been, as the characters were very flat. The relationship dynamics and the way everyone behaved made no sense. The protagonist and her actions were incredibly irritating, her thought processes were very repetitive and the central relationship, the one with her partner, wasn't believable at all.

The promised plot didn't really start until 80% into the book. Those last 20% could have made for a fun thriller if they had taken up and been spread out over the entire novel.

I found the blurb to be incredibly misleading. It implies that this book is focused on a deadly game, which it isn't at all, in my opinion. It's about a pregnant woman deciding if she wants to be a part of this wealthy family or not, while dealing with her own past. Also, most of the plot points mentioned in the descriptions don't come into play until almost halfway through the book, with some elements only being introduced almost at the end!

I had an enjoyable time reading it. And while it was very engaging and I wasn't bored, I was mostly waiting for something to happen. For there to be more to the story. For it all to actually make sense. There was clearly a lot of potential. But I was just very frustrated by the end.