Constant Reader YA July 2025: Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington

 

This one needs a bit of a personal introduction.

If you've read my other works you know that I live in New York and commute to and from the city to my home. That means I spend a fair amount of time waiting for trains and that always means I'm in bookstores browsing while I wait for the announcements. Sometimes that's long enough to get drawn into a riveting novel but most times I know when to tear myself away from the pages.

Sometime early in 2024 I was in a bookstore in Penn Station and I found myself idly leafing through a book called Their Vicious Games. I got drawn into so quickly and so thoroughly that for the first time in a while, I missed my train and had to catch a later one. I didn't buy the book right then – I was in a hurry – but I remembered the name and the author.

A few months ago I was in my local library and as I expected I found another copy of it. I had forgotten the author by this point – for reasons that will become clear soon – but I remembered the name and I immediately checked out.

In the last two weeks I've been reading this book on my commutes out of the city to my home in Bayside. And on at least two occasions I've been so riveted by the prose of the author Joelle Wellington that I nearly missed my stop both times. That all of this comes from what is the literary debut of Wellington makes this accomplishment all the more remarkable; not since Julia Bartz's The Writing Retreat have I read a novel where the author came out with a work so absolutely perfect that I couldn't believe they hadn't written at least five or six novels before this one. That's scary to think of – though not nearly as terrifying as the events in Their Vicious Games.

The events in Their Vicious Games are told from the perspective of Adina Walker, an African-American woman who attends Edgewater, a prestigious prep school Massachusetts. The school is, like most schools, all white and catering to the top one percent of New England. Adina has only been able to attend because of her scholarship that was added because her mother has a tenured teaching position there. Adina has hated every minute attending this school but she is not a fan of her parents suburban home either. And at the start of the novel, not long after graduation she has even more reason to loathe it.

Her 'Alpha Enemy' is Esme Aldrige, the leader of the biggest clique of girls at Edgewater. The two of them used to be friends because Adina understood the rules. Esme is cruel and callous and is fine with you being her friend  - as long as you never eclipse her. Adina manages to get into every college she wants to and because Esme thinks she wasn't sympathetic enough she begins a long process of isolating and destroying her at Edgewater. This would be a bad enough but when Adina learns about the Aldrige's family financial troubles and miscalculates the harshness of it  Esme decides to destroy. Adina has no future going forward and so she makes a play at the last social event.

This involves the Remington family, which has been attending Edgewater for two hundred years. Specifically it involves Pierce Remington IV. The Remington family is so rich that Esme doesn't think its odd that Pierce has only two friends: Charles and Penthesilea, who has been his girlfriend practically since kindergarten but who he notably broke up with just before graduation. When Pierce tells her he knows Adina from 'the Diversity Page on the school website', that should be a warning to Adina right then. The fact that Pierce seems so self-absorbed should be another sign but she decides to 'drunkenly' hook up with him in order to get an invitation to 'The Finish'. That his older brother goes out of her way to tell her that Adina shouldn't come is another warning sign she doesn't recognize.

But the next day she receives an engraved Invitation to the Finish. According to the invitation it is a two week program 'led by the esteemed Remington matriarchs' – in which 12 girls are selected in order to 'cultivate the poise, skill and survival instincts needed to succeed at new heights." These girls are chosen to compete in three events from which one will be selected to receive the full financial and emotional support of the Remington family in perpetuity.

To be clear we will never know what these 'finishes' are like in 'normal years' but its hard to imagine that it could be any more friendly then usual. All Adina cares about is that she needs to succeed. So she packs light and is driven to the Remington estate, which no one in the family has ever been to. That she's asked to surrender her phone before she begins is the biggest warning sign of all – her mother even points that out.

There are twelve girls as one would expect and aside from Adina, there's only one woman of color. She calls herself Saint ("you wouldn't be able to pronounce my real name" she tells the Remington's pointedly) and she's neither from Edgewater nor America. Her family is that of significant wealth and power and she believes that this gives her an edge to get what she wants. She very quickly is disabused of that notion.

Three girls are also invited who Adina knows all too well: Esme, her best friend Hawthorne and Penthesilea. All of them know the Remington family in a way Adina doesn't and the presence of Pierce's former girlfriend makes Adina think the fix is in. The fact that the Remington Patriarch – who is referred to in the novel as 'Third' – barely seems willing to talk to Adina is another big sign.

The most significant new face is 'Aunt Leighton' or Dr. Remington. She unfurls the tale of the Finish to the assembled girls. She calls them all 'exceptional and bright…but unrefined and raw. We will rectify this." She tells them Edgewater was found 150 years earlier by Matilda Remington, who we see in a portrait but know nothing else about. According to Leighton (who we will soon learn is an unreliable narrator at best), The Finish champions women in industries that are typically male-dominated and committing to 'propelling them forward' "For what are women if not progenitors of the future?"

When she describes the details as well as the fact after each event there will be 'a culling', there's tittering by all but Adina. She ends by assuring everyone she is a trained psychiatrist if you need her.

The first night there is a cocktail party Adina circulates around the room. She talks with most of the Remington's in their native setting. Third ignores her. Leighton takes an interest in her. Pierce – or 'Four' as he is called here- seems charmed by her. Graham's eyes are bloodshot and he doesn't even bother to attend. He tells her that he'll never be one of them and you shouldn't want to be. Adina says she's only here to get back what I earned and all that came with it. Graham tells her he would give every cent of it away if it was his and Adina laughs at him. She doesn't realize what's she in for.

And then moments later one of the girls screams. Adina runs to her and she's clear in agony and shock. No one moves, not the Remington's, not the staff, not even the girls. When the girl dies Third, bored, tells his sister-in-law to clean up which she does. When Adina is hauled from the room Saint finally realizes Adina doesn't know why she's here.

Then Saint tells her that most times the Finish is what the Remington's say – but it's all publicity to cover what it actually is. The Finish is about the Remington men. When a male heir turns eighteen – like Pierce just did – the Finish is done so that he can find a wife. And in order to prove that you're fit to be a Remington woman, you have to be willing to kill for it. None of the losers are found – there are 'accidents' and no doubt the families are financially compensated or perhaps destroyed themselves by the Remington wealth.

When Adina learns the truth – and the way that Hawthorne and Saint tell it to her so matter-of-factly is almost more chilling then this – Adina is horrified because she doesn't want to die. Worse it now seems that Esme has decided to eliminate the competition and will do anything necessary – including forming cliques.

Now I will grow vague on the nature of the events themselves and talk more about characters. Adina and Saint are the only ones who don't want to marry Pierce; they just want to survive. Saint spends far too much time thinking that because her family is untouchable financially the Remington's will protect her, something that takes too long to disabuse her of. Esme is doing this because she is so obsessed with wealth that she thinks that this will restore her financially.

The hardest one of the girls to figure out is Penny because she already has everything. We later learn, in one of the book's darkest jokes, that Penny has spent her entire upbringing training for this very Finish and in a sense her parents have been giving her everything. Her family is as old as the Remington and in a sense she doesn't have to do any of this. Through much of this she will end up allying with Adina and working against her but Adina doesn't understand her motivations. It's only when the competition is in its final days that we learn the horrible truth about Penthesilea – and in a sadder way, what this book is about.

Adina spends much of the novel trying to form alliances with all of the Remington family many of whom seem to be on her side for some reason. In a funny way Third is the most honest of all of the Remington's during this competition: he spends most of it dealing with business meetings, berating his children and talking down to everybody as people die around him. We learn Third's wife was also part of a Finish herself but is currently in a spa. "Finish's take a lot out of her" Graham tells her. He also points out that Third has spent his life having sex with their nannies and probably most of the staff. The implication is clear: once you've been responsible for killing so many people, you know longer have the right to complain about anything.

Graham didn't have a Finish and has spent much of his life taking the abuse of his father in an effort to protect Four from everything that his family forces on him. It's clear that Third only sees his children as props for himself and has no capacity for love. Graham is willing to help Adina because he wants her to survive but it's also clear he doesn't have the stones to do anything more than that.

Aunt Leighton is the most interesting one. She won a Finish herself and is the Game Master, the one who defines the rules and the ones who sets things in motion. She comes from a working class family and worked for the Remington's. She is smart, ambitious, ruthless and at the end of her finish she won over  Third's younger brother and they got married. But it's clear that none of this has earned her respect, certainly not from her brother-in-law who clearly still sees her as the servant girl. (Her husband died long ago and Third makes it clear he doesn't consider her one of them.) Third makes it clear that Leighton serves at his pleasure

It's clear she takes an interest in Adina because she sees something of herself in her. But it's also clear none of this has made her any less a Remington: she's more than willing to threaten the Walker family to keep her in check and she has absolutely no problem sending all of these girls to die horribly again and again. It's also clear she's far too happy with the wealth and has forgotten what it's like to be someone like Adina: "Every one of us is lacking in Leighton's eyes. " It's never clear why she's so in favor of Adina. Does she want an ally in this fight against the Remington men? Someone she can get drunk with when her husband strays? Someone who can take over the Finish when she's gone?

Adina also tries her best to win over Pierce because she thinks he has influence over what is happening. She thinks because he picked her for the Finish that he wants to change the rules. We learn that previous Finishes were far less ordered and far bloodier with little opportunity and Pierce has allowed for some moderation and training. For too long Adina thinks she can use this to survive until she realizes that Pierce is just as horrible as everyone else, if not worse.

This leads to a scene not long before the final events that is one of the most frightening I've read in a novel that isn't strictly speaking horror. The surviving girls of the Finish are at the last party – and for the first time, guests are present at the event. Adina momentarily thinks there's hope:

"And then I begin to put names to faces. One of the Senators of Massachusetts is here, along with his wife. The headmaster of Edgewater Academy with a brandy in his hand. The CFO of one of those charitable foundations that partner's with Edgewater's community service department; it's the same foundation that our senior class had to work and volunteer with for twenty-five hours in order to graduate. The kind of people the Remington's call to give keynotes at the Edgewater fundraisers every year…

They all know."

At that point Leighton who has been personally leading the girls through all this steps back and Third takes all the credit for Finish. At this meeting we see all the parents of so many Edgewater students. And this leads to an absolutely horrendous game of Simon Says where the surviving girls are forced to humiliate themselves in front of the top one percent of the top one percent. The final humiliating action is one of the most brutal things you can imagine and you can see one girl break forever.

It is here the true nature of Wellington's novel is clear: it is not about race or even class but how our society will completely and total subjugate our young girls to break them in every single way possible. That they are all essentially doing this to be trophy wives is the sickest joke in a book full of sick jokes. Games is often grotesque, darkly funny, more often then you'd expect. A superb joke comes with two girls named Hannah: Hannah G and Hannah R. After the first event Hannah R dies but everyone keeps calling Hannah G by that name. One of her last lines is : "I'm the only Hannah. I made sure of it!" which even given the circumstances is still hysterical.

How everything plays out in the end I will leave for the reader to discover. I should mention that the novel is narrated entirely from the first-person perspective of Adina, which no doubt will make you think she prevails. I will only say that while she lives through the events that doesn't necessarily make her the winner. It makes her a survivor – with all the horror attached with it.

I should mention according to Wellington's bio her childhood was spent wandering the Brooklyn public library  and 'when she isn't writing, she's reading' – two more reasons for me to love her. Their Vicious Games is an extraordinary piece of fiction and what holds me in awe is knowing that Wellington is, like her heroine, only getting started being a force of nature in the years and decades to come.