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Book Review of This Gorgeous Game

This Gorgeous Game
skywriter319 avatar reviewed on + 784 more book reviews


THIS GORGEOUS GAME is one of those books that, try as hard as you can, you won't be able to get off your mind after reading. It's chilling and astonishingly well-written, and if you're looking for a book that will disturb and move you, this should be the one.

Stalking is extremely difficult to discuss, because it's personal, upsetting, and so subtle you don't realize something's wrong until it's already happened. That's why what Donna Freitas has accomplished in THIS GORGEOUS GAME is so impressive and respectable. In writing alternatingly lyrical and down-to-earth, Freitas captures the simultaneous realism and surrealism of Olivia's situation. Passages of unearthly beauty entwine with creepy situations for the mood that this story needs to be effectively convincing.

Olivia narrates her story with all the subtlety that this topic demands. Most of us will know what's happening, can see the signs, but we can also see why Olivia could not have noticed the signs like the way we with our foresight can. Olivia's story perfectly captures the terror of stalking, because it's precisely its near-invisibility that makes it so disturbingly powerful.

THIS GORGEOUS GAME is as far from a light read as you can get. I still get goosebumps every time I think about or try to talk about this book, which hopefully shows the power that Olivia's story had over me, the effect of Donna Freitas' words. If physical horror isn't your thing and you want to read something that will affect you profoundly, THIS GORGEOUS GAME is the ultimate choice. See if you get chills from reading it as I did.