Darkly

Starred review from September 9, 2024
Though 17-year-old Dia enjoys working at her family’s antiques shop, she worries that her life is going nowhere and yearns for more. Then she sees an ad from the Louisiana Veda Foundation, founded in honor of the 39-years-dead eccentric genius of the same name, creator of the complicated board games—now collector’s items—known as a Darkly. The foundation is seeking seven teens for an unusual summer internship, for which Dia applies and is accepted. The interns are taken to a small North Sea Island off the coast of England, where they find their job to be much different—and far more deadly—than advertised. But with a life-changing cash prize on the line for each of them, Dia and her fellow interns refuse to back down. Twists and connections are satisfying and surprising in this high-stakes thriller by Pessl (Neverworld Wake), who takes familiar YA tropes and turns them on their head using confident prose. Fearless and whip-smart Dia, as well as the rest of the intersectionally diverse cast, will have readers cheering them on from page one. Assorted letters, news stories, and other ephemera depicting the events add visual interest throughout. Ages 12–up.

Starred review from September 15, 2024
Seven teens are chosen for a mysterious internship with the Louisiana Veda Foundation, investigating the remnants of board-game empire Darkly and its enigmatic founder. Arcadia Gannon, 17, who presents white, comes from Eminence, Missouri, is bad at school but good at puzzles, runs her mother's antiques shop, loves Darkly games, and knows as much as anyone can about Louisiana Veda, the long-dead mastermind behind their (impossible, often terrifying) games. The internship involves being marooned--along with Poe from France, Franz-Luc from Germany, Cooper from the U.S., Torin from Ireland, Everleigh from Iceland, and Mouse from Nigeria--on the island off the coast of England where the Darkly factory is located. They're tasked with finding a missing boy, who disappeared while playing a never-released game, the sole copy of which was stolen years earlier. The prize: �1,000,000 and complete ownership of a Darkly game of their choice. What follows is a treasure hunt, a mystery both present and past, a sometimes-terrifying adventure, and, for Dia, a coming into her own after a life of being overshadowed by a flighty mother whom she's had to parent. Like a Darkly game, the whole is mesmerizing, improbable, deeply compelling, and best enjoyed after dark. Pessl's impeccably controlled prose plays with ideas about presentation and storytelling on a meta level even as Dia grapples with the same ideas (as well as the concepts of destiny and determination) in Veda's life and her own. Roll the die, flip the card: We have a winner.(Mystery. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2024

Gr 9 Up-In Dia's world, the Darkly games created by enigmatic artist Louisiana Veda are a global cultural phenomenon. The expansive, intricate games are rare and extremely valuable. A coveted internship with the Foundation responsible for continuing Veda's work after her death seems impossibly far out of reach for Dia, who spends every bit of her non-school time running her family's antique shop. Her shock at finding out she has been selected for the internship is matched only by her determination to go, and soon Dia finds herself traveling to London for it despite her flighty, scattered mother's misgivings. As she discovers more about the expectations for herself and the six other interns, things begin to feel more like a Darkly game than reality, with tricky games, puzzles, and clues to be picked apart around every corner and many things that are not as they seem. Quick chapters break up the intensely complex and densely layered Darkly world; the lore of the games is abundant and wickedly cool. Quirky, off-beat teens with opaque motivations solve creative, unique puzzles, and the inclusion of multimedia pieces throughout the narrative adds more compelling detail. VERDICT Creative and unique, this is a special treat for readers who wish Jennifer Lynn Barnes's The Inheritance Games had been set in the world of Jumanji.-Allie Stevens

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2024
Grades 8-12 The Willy Wonka of board games wants to know: What would you kill for? That's the question Arcadia "Dia" Gannon has to answer to apply for the internship run by the estate of Louisiana Veda, a woman known for the creation of 28 unsettling board games called Darklys. In short order, Dia is awarded the internship and whisked off to a small, abandoned island near London with six other teens who are tasked to find the twenty-ninth Darkly. Very genre-aware, Dia is prepared for things to get weird, and they definitely get weirder. This atmospheric mystery is combined with terrifying sessions of an interactive Darkly that the interns are intermittently kidnapped to participate in. Dia's character has depths that supporting characters lack, although those characters are multifaceted enough to still be substantial. Overall, Pessl set forth with an ambitious concept, and the result is thrilling, mysterious, and full of shocking twists through the very last page.

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