Glorious Rivals has been on my list to read since its inception. I have made a Youtube video for every book in the series except The Inheritance Games and The Hawthorne Legacy, but I did do a recap for both of those for The Final Gambit video review. So, it’s safe to say that I was more than ready to pick up this book. But, I have to say, that it took me a really long time to even get into it. 

I started this book on the way back from vacation. I thought, what better way to spend my long, boring flights than listening to one of my favorite authors?? Well, unfortunately, I found my mind wandering. I didn’t feel as invested as I thought I should. For almost half of the novel, I had to force myself to pay attention. The pacing, even though there was a billion things going on (which, now that I think of it, may have been part of the problem), was so slow to me. Maybe I would’ve been more invested if I had done a recap beforehand, but I don’t think so because Jennifer Lynn Barnes did an amazing job at subtly recapping The Grandest Game at the beginning of the novel. 

So, what did I love? The characters as always. Rohan, Savannah, Grayson, Lyra, and Gigi all have so much going for them as characters. I found myself loving each and every one of them, which I didn’t really like them all by the end of The Grandest Game so that was a positive for me to learn to love each and every one of them. 

As far as questions that we wanted answers to go, you find out who kidnapped Gigi, you finish The Grandest Game and get to know the winner, and you learn a little more about the mysterious not-part-of-the-game clues that popped up throughout the last novel. To be honest, though, you didn’t learn enough throughout the book to really warrant another whole novel. 

Spoilers ahead. 

Alright, y’all know I can’t last long before jumping to the spoilers.

• Gigi was captured by Matias Slater who, not coincidentally, was working for Eve. 
• Jackson makes a shocking appearance (see, “The Same Backwards as Forwards” from Games Untold) by semi rescuing Gigi, but he made a mysterious disappearance and I don’t think he was mentioned again after that. 
• There is a mysterious force of “three” who are known as the black, red, and white. The only one I truly understood is that the black cloaked woman means death or “the end”. I was little confused by the rest at the end and listened to it a few times before just giving up. Odette is the white cloaked woman. 
• Savannah wins The Grandest Game but it’s totally anticlimactic because no one is there to cheer. Savannah (conveniently in my opinion) completely drops her vendetta against Avery and is just like *shrugs*, guess we’re moving on now. 
• Avery is officially kidnapped presumably by Alice Hawthorne. 

So, that is where the book ends. Lyra and Grayson have their romantic moments and are officially “together”. Rohan and Savannah are still building romantic tension apparently. And Gigi is well, Gigi. 

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I was hoping I would. The pacing is extremely off to me and there was just so much going on in the beginning that I couldn’t focus until almost halfway through the book. I very confidently can give this novel 3.5 out of 5 stars (rounded to 4 out of 5 for social platforms). It’s definitely above “meh”, but not good enough for me to give it a solid 4 stars. It has a good cliffhanger, but there wasn’t enough meat in the novel for me to truly be invested. 

Source: Personal Copy

(P.S. You can read this book for free by signing up for a free trial of Audible, which gives you two free audiobooks of your choice!)