The Revenge Game

September 11, 2023
Jewish 16-year-old Alyson Benowitz adores romance novels, but her own love life is often derailed by her being a “giant failure in the flirting department.” When her all-girls boarding school combines with an all-boys counterpart to become Upstate New York’s Sullivan-Stewart Preparatory School, however, she begins dating charming new classmate Riggs. Alyson revels in her blossoming relationship, until she learns about the King’s Cup, a game the boys have concocted to determine who among them “has the most sexual prowess.” Eager to retaliate, a group of girls establish the Queen’s Cup, a competition in which they compete to embarrass the boys through public humiliation tactics. And as Alyson continues dating Riggs, she reasons away his questionable behavior, refusing to believe that he would betray her. But when a student goes missing, Alyson’s love life may be the least of her worries. Taylor (Don’t Breathe a Word) integrates in-world news articles, TV interviews, and emails between nonlinear chapters to strategically layer clues and set up sometimes predictable twists while employing Alyson’s agreeable first-person POV to render impactful demonstrations of toxic masculinity within the school. Most characters read as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Danielle Burby, Mad Woman Literary.