Someday you will blossom, and when that day comes I will find you. And then, my wayward beauty, we will play a different kind of chess. A variant with people, instead of pawns. A variant of love and war, of life and death.
He followed her because he wanted to own her. She trusted him because she wanted excitement. There's a saying that curiosity can kill … but Valerian Kimble is beginning to learn that satisfaction might just be worse.
Fourteen-year-old Valerian lives in an age where antiheroes and bad boys are portrayed as the romantic ideal, and good guys are passe and boring. So when Gavin Mecozzi, the school's brilliant but twisted loner, begins to show an interest in her after a chance meeting in a pet store, Val is intrigued. He's charming and poetic and makes her feel things that she thought were only possible in books--
Fear.
Because somebody is stalking Val. Somebody who wants to hurt her. Own her. Possess her. Maybe even kill her.
As her meetings with Gavin unravel into a more complex and frightening relationship, Val can't help but wonder if the new boy in her life is her depraved and obsessive stalker.
And whether he's capable of murder.
Time is running out.
Overview from Goodreads
Overview from Goodreads
See Fearscape (Horrorscape #1) in:
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Before anything else, I'd like to let you know that I actually won the Deadly Games: Horrorscape #1-3 in a giveaway. However, that and the fact that Nenia is my friend in Goodreads does not affect my affect my opinion with this book. Also, spoilers ahead!
While I was in my anime/manga phase, I'd developed a weird fixation with fictional psychopaths, the operative word being fictional. I never and will never feel the same with the ones in real life. I don't idolize them, the fictional ones, in a way that I want to become one of them but their mindset—the way their thoughts stray and differ from that of a normal human being, how manipulative they could get just to get what they want—fascinates me a lot.
Which is why I liked Gavin even though he was the kind of person one was usually wary of. A lot of people might see him as this mysterious, quiet, bad boy, but I never did. He gave off this ominous aura that I couldn't put my finger on at first. Then it turned out that he was a crazy person. Aside from being hot as fuck,
He regarded her through half-closed eyes, and while he seemed perfectly content in this lackadaisical slouch his entire body seemed a heartbeat away from springing into motion. He was striking.
(He already had me at the half-closed eyes. *panty melts in the background*)
the way he saw Valerian and how twisted it was ensnared me. Weird, I know. I'm really eccentric when it comes to the stuff I read sometimes. But when Valerian read his journal and got a glimpse of the way he was thinking, I felt like I was “walking a thin line between passion and terror.”
She raises feelings in me so powerful that there are times I don't know what I'll do. I think I might hurt her if I get too close. No. I know I will. Because the thought of hunting her instills in me the same thrill as the men who chase a vixen through the wood.
(Let me segue a bit, I found this song and I think it suited what Gavin was saying in this part.)
In the early part of the story, it was already quite obvious who the stalker was. Well, it's obvious from the blurb actually. The thrill wasn't with discovering who the stalker was but how Val will deal about it. She fell under his elaborately planned trap, how will she even untangle herself from him? Or could she do it when it's obvious that he's not going to let her go at all?
The pace of the story was slow yet it fit perfectly with Gavin's profile. Think about it. He was good with multiple things: chess, archery, swimming, and drawing. All of which required discipline, patience, and a shit ton of practice. But his mindset leaned more towards chess. Every move he made was tactical, every reaction of his prey calculated. He was like playing his own version of human chess.
This is the kind of “dark” that I crave that I usually see only in Japanese mangas, Korean manhwas and M/M books. Rarely in M/F because books that are as twisted as this disturb readers, thus lower ratings and such. And from my experience, reading books that have a lower rating than 4 stars is like a gamble. I rarely read them. It's either you find a gem or shit. In this case, I found a hidden gem.
I didn't have any problems with the book. At least not that I could think of now. Valerian was naïve but hey, what do you expect with a fourteen-year old? She reminded me so much of myself when I once read the diary I made when I was around twelve to fourteen.
I also didn't have any problem with their age differences. I know that it's illegal in America if an adult dates an underage but that's in America. It's not really like that here in my country. Hell, when I was sixteen one of my male classmates confessed to me that his girlfriend was twenty-four. So no, it didn't bother me like most people.
With the writing, I loved it. I wouldn't be feeling both fear and affection for Gavin if I wasn't able to envision him vividly in my brain, would I?
I didn't give this book five stars because the story is just starting. I have a feeling that the real thing only starts in the second book and I'm really looking forward to it.
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