Thank you so much to GoodReads and L.G. Cunningham for giving me a free copy and the opportunity to review it.
"The Game With No Name" isn't horrible, but it feels like a first draft that needs work.
Izzy Miller is a girl who just moved to a mysterious old house with her family. Everyone is excited except for her. Though, it isn't the house she objects to as much as having to move to a new place because her genius twin brother, Noah, got into a special school for gifted kids. Izzy is a moody 12 year old girl, jealous of her twin brother receiving praise. She is also sick of her family's game nights. That all changes when a new neighbor boy shows up named Walter , and a mysterious board game appears.
The writing is fine, and very readable. This book is meant for a younger audience, and for the most part, the writing is clear. However, I didn't know Izzy was a girl until chapter two, as no hints about her gender were given in chapter one. I thought she was a boy, with her talk of basketball and her twin brother.
The neighbor kid, Walter, just shows up out of nowhere, without even a knock at the door. Izzy even thinks he's a ghost at first. He just appears in the house, which is odd. Then when they discover the game, the story kicks into a lot of action and fantasy sequences a little too fast. There are no set ups, and I didn't feel like I got to know the characters well enough.
The fantasy sequences also feel a bit disjointed. One minute they are in a jungle with a rhino and the next they are in a haunted manor and the next they are in Monopoly for some reason. Then there's a twist which I didn't really get and a backstory to Walter. That's a lot to stuff in 207 pages and doesn't really allow anything to develop on a deeper level.
I could see this being a good lower middle grade novel, but this felt like a first draft. I don't think L.G. Cunningham is a bad writer, and I think he could be a really good kids writer with a couple more drafts, but this needed some work. Two stars.
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