is me and Jennifer Lynn Barnes and I read her latest release, The Grandest Game. I am going to recommend that you read books one through four of The Inheritance Games to fully understand this book. There might be minor spoilers, I’m going to try to not spoil anything in this description, but before you dive into this book you got to read the first four. We are following three new folks, we are following Lyra who gets invited to The Grandest Game. She does have a connection to the Hawthorne that she believes is going to be explored during this game. We have Rohan who also has a connection to the Hawthorne, but he is solely in it for the money. He finds a ticket in the wild to the second annual Grandest Games and decides that he needs to really make sure that he secures his competition, he’s a big manipulator, and really wants to win that prize money. And then last we have Gigi who also has a connection to the Hawthorne. After turning down a personally handed to her ticket, she finds a ticket in the wild and then ends up on Hawthorne Island. Hawthorne Island is somewhere that you visit in one of the previous books. I’m not going to tell you what happens there though, you got to read that on your own. There are seven total competitors that are competing for I think it’s like $26 million. And the focus of the book is on escape rooms and trying to get out of these very puzzly escape rooms. I love that there were multiple perspectives, I feel like it slowed the pacing down of the book, which I feel like is a big critique of mine in the past. You have three different perspectives, there’s three different escape rooms, three different puzzles. I really, really enjoyed seeing that. And then also the relationship of the characters that are in this escape room, because again, I said there are seven competitors, but only three escape rooms. So we have some teams that are formed inadvertently because of the escape room. So you have to see who makes it out in time to get past the first phase of this second annual Grandest Games, because there is going to be a sequel to this book coming out. So you really focus on the first phase. This is a 4.5 out of five stars for me, I had some trouble with some of the visualization, which I thought was because of the pacing of the book. But Jennifer herself has a plantation, so she doesn’t really see images in her head at all. Whereas I really can see visual images in my head. And so I would read some lines, and I just felt like some things were missing, it would take me out of the book a bit. But overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I cannot wait to get to the next one. And because I met Jennifer Lynn Barnes on a tour stop, we got these fun little Grandest Games trading cards. So there are three that are in every pack. I got Lyra, I got Savannah, and I got Brady. There are eight cards to collect based on this collector set. I don’t know how people would collect more than this besides going to multiple tour stops in multiple states. So I really think that was super fun. The back of the cards say her initials, which I just think is really cool. 4.5 out of five stars overall, can’t wait to see the next one. And I hope there’s more cards on the next tour stops that she does, because I feel like that would just be a really, really fun addition. Let me know if you’ve read the Grandest Games and what you think.