
Title: The Dead Game by A Bates
Summary: No-one was really supposed to get hurt. The Dead Game was something that Linnie, Ming and Jackson made up in their senior year to get back at all those people who really deserved it… the liars, the cheats and the bullies. To play the game, all they have to do is embarrass their chosen enemy in public.
But things start to go horribly wrong…
Their first “hit” ends up in hospital – and then someone dies. But when the three friends decide to stop playing, the dead game won’t stop.
Suddenly the rules have changed. How can they end the deadly game they have started…?
Tagline: Someone is playing for keeps
Notes: I will use “Bad Guy” throughout my reviews to refer to the anonymous killer/prankster/whatever. Doesn’t mean it’s a guy. I will now refer to the bad guy as “Muffin Man” because of The Mall.
Initial Thoughts:
I know I’ve read this. I bought it at the same time as The Cemetery, but I couldn’t remember a thing about it. In my mind, this book was some hazy combination of Freeze Tag and The Cemetery – something about being frozen in place while something supernatural hunted our protagonist and her friends. [Wing: I want to read the version that exists in your memory.]
As we have established, we cannot trust my memory. That’s not what this is about. At all.
Also, I read this about two weeks ago, and can barely remember a thing about it. It was ok, nothing so awful as The Stalker or whatever, but most of the plot points have vanished. Oh, this is the book where I used the “Parents? What Parents?” trope to figure out the Muffin Man.
[Wing: I’d never read it before. I quite enjoyed it, except for that ending. As usual, lately.]
Note: one of the leads is called Ming. I’m fairly certain that somewhere in here I will accidentally swap hers and Wing’s names over. Just go with it.
Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but this whole process goes a lot better if you’re listening to Take On Me by Jeffster! (Vik Sahay makes everything better.)