Nora Sakavic

Neil Josten is out of time. He knew when he came to PSU he wouldn't survive the year, but with his death right around the corner he's got more reasons than ever to live. Befriending the Foxes was inadvisable. Kissing one is unthinkable. Neil should know better than to get involved with anyone this close to the end, but Andrew's never been the easiest person to walk away from. If they both say it doesn't mean anything, maybe Neil won't regret losing it, but the one person Neil can't lie to is himself. He's got promises to keep and a team to get to championships if he can just outrun Riko a little longer, but Riko's not the only monster in Neil's life. The truth might get them all killed--or be Neil's one shot at getting out of this alive.

All for the Game, Book 3

The King's Men

luca

"Survival tip: no one likes a smart mouth." "Except you," Neil reminded him.

Tonight Neil was in perfect form, and he was mad as hell at the Ravens for hurting his Foxes.

Kevin dragged his stare back to Wymack's face and said, "and my father comes to all of my games. That is enough." On Wymack's other side, Abby's gaze softened. Wymack's jaw worked for a moment before he could say in an even tone, "Your mother would be proud of you." "Not just of me," Kevin said in a rare bout of humanity.

At length Andrew smiled, slow and cold. It was the first time he'd smiled since coming off his drugs, and Neil couldn't help but stare. "Now it's getting fun," Andrew said.

"Let Riko be King," Kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. "Most coveted, most protected. He'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me?" Kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. "I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board." "Queen," Andrew said

"Interesting" was too tame a word for the look in Kevin's eyes. The smile that finally slipped free and curved his lips was hungry.

"I have a backliner for you. Do you have room on next year's line-up?"

"You're going to play with him?" "Someone needs to keep an eye on that idiot," Andrew said.

"Denial doesn't suit you. We talked about this." "You talked," Andrew said. "I didn't listen."

Andrew stayed behind like Neil knew he would; Kevin needed Andrew more than Neil did today.

"Weren't you two friends once?" Kevin opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked away. "That was a long time ago."

"Kengo is dead." Neil stared blankly at her, but it didn't take long to figure the rest out. "Jean?" "Riko hurt him," Renee said. "I am going to get him." "They won't let you into Evermore," Neil said. Renee's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Yes, they will."

Neil reached for a gun and hit Andrew's arm instead.

"Who's humanizing who in that relationship, anyway?" Andrew casually reached for the wooden block of knives. Renee moved it out of his reach without batting an eye and smiled at the look Andrew gave her for interfering.

"Is this really okay?" "Is it okay, he says," Dan said, "like we didn't all just invite ourselves to his vacation."

"Did you have any plans to do anything?" Matt finally thought to ask Neil. "Besides the obvious, I mean." Neil wasn't sure if Matt meant Exy or Andrew.

"You are a mess," Andrew said against Neil's lips. "What else is new?"

Neil studied Andrew's face until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

No one talked about it, but somehow they all ended up in Neil and Matt's room. Matt and Aaron shoved the couch out of the way, and the girls showed up a minute later with blankets. The living room wasn't meant to sleep nine bodies but somehow they made a workable nest out of it.

"You are a Fox," Andrew said, like it was that simple, and maybe it was.

He didn't want to think about this, didn't want to feel this, so he thought about the Foxes instead. He clung tight to the memory of their unhesitating friendship and their smiles. He pretended the heartbeat pounding a sick pace in his temples was an Exy ball ricocheting off the court walls. He thought of Wymack holding him up in December and Andrew pushing him down against the bedroom floor. The memories made him weak with grief and loss, but they made him stronger, too. He'd come to the Foxhole Court every inch a lie, but his friends made him into someone real.

"Thank you," he finally said. He couldn't say he meant thanks for all of it: the keys, the trust, the honesty, and the kisses. Hopefully Andrew would figure it out eventually. "You were amazing."

"I really want to know when Coach figured this out." "It isn't a 'this'," Andrew reminded him. Neil didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. "I really want to know when Coach figured out that you want to kill me only ninety-three percent of the time."

Naomi 

It was about dang time to get a new hyperfixation with an book series. Best start into 2025! <3

Nate Mason

Cici Pearson

ang 

i will never let them go. i just can't let them go.

kelsey

“Thank you,” he finally said. He couldn’t say he meant thanks for all of it: the keys, the trust, the honesty, and the kisses. Hopefully Andrew would figure it out eventually. “You were amazing.” 

GODDDD the foxes will always have me in a chokehold

i have no idea what i’m supposed to do with myself now. i’m never going to move on. i’m gonna be stuck here forever. 

sarah ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

i love my traumatized murder lacrosse gay boys 

Clara Gauthier

karo

this is a 6⭐️ book and idc what anyone says. andrew and neil are my roman empire

aleksandra

4/5

Let's pretend I didn't give it four stars. 

*runs away*

i hate you but that doesn't mean i won't blow you.
weird way to confess but okay !

akynn 

I read this whole trilogy and I'm still not completely sure what cracker dust is.

FIRST OF ALL i love andrew so baddd he's everythingg and also neil aaa seeing him think of the foxes as people he can trust, his family, is something that can be so personal to me... 

but ok. i think nora tried to fit a loooot of things into this book and it's like a new revelation followed by another new revelation without any room for the audience to catch up with what has happened, or at least to me. because of all the new stuff she included i feel like a lot of details were glossed over. even after the book has ended, i realise i still don't know much about the moriyamas? everything about them is kind of just vaguely insinuated. why did ichirou let him off the hook way too easily? (that being said there is something very intriguing about ichirou's character i wanna know everything about this mafia bossman) 

most importantly the riot scene HELLOOO how did the team react nora GIVE ME THE REACTIONS????? we know absolutely nothing about what went down on their side/how they reacted when they found out he was missing? tbh she could have separated this into two books to give herself more room to be more detailed... oh i can only dream... 

also nora on her tumblr acting like aaron is her favourite character but giving him no character growth at all throughout the entire series he's just.. there.. no thoughts head empty just always on the dance floor 

tldr obsessed with andreil and nora is a freak

Julia Moran 

trixie

don’t look at me like that i’m not your answer and you sure as fuck aren’t mine

ariadna

honour

minute one and a half without the foxes: considering painting my walls orange and joining a lacrosse team because i miss my BABIES

roro

gjajcjakd i don’t want this series to end :((

Maddison 

PLEASE TELL ME WHERE CAN I FIND A WYMACK OF MY OWN!?! 

between coach’s witty comebacks, the immaculate pacing throughout the series, and everyone’s favourite sociopath, i think i found my new favourite series 🧡

I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again after this one. 

Kat 

OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again after this one. 

this series is like if you were to splice the two main guys from riverdale together… like it simultaneously exudes “epic highs and lows of high school football” energy and  “have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? that’s weird” vibes. anyway, was fun ig… this one was the best of the three for sure. 

grace 

chloe ✩‧₊˚✧｡*ﾟ

I FINISHED, I FINISHED AND I LOVED IT AND CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR ANDREIL THANK YOU

Finishing this book took me a lot, and I mean a lot, longer than I thought it would. Being the longest out of the series it shouldn’t have surprised me, but somehow The King’s Men did a “turn-tables”-move on my expectations in general. Going in, after #2 of the trilogy, I expected to be in pain for the full ride of it. That … did not happen. I was mildly uncomfortable at best and that, strange as it may sound, disappointed me, especially considering how hard the end of the second book had hit me. I know now why that might have been the case and I’ll get to that reasoning in a bit. My general impression of this finale was, very shortened, too long, too much happened, and it lacked so much depth. Sprinkle annoyance about the style of writing and questionable plot choices on top and now we have the disappointing finale for a series I so far really enjoyed.

First of all, the style – oh boy. Book 1 and 2 didn’t leave me enough breathing room to even consider this, but as the third book tended to be dragging in quite a few chapters, a reader suddenly notices repetitive writing, poor choice of words or using the same descriptions (or none at all?) over and over again. Culminating in a paragraph I highlighted in which 5 out of 6 sentences started with the same name. This gets old really quick.

In the first two books, I lived for the banter. This flattened out here so much I’m not sure there even was any left. At least not in a way that was quick-witted enough to leave me chuckling – or remembering it.

Talking it through I was finally able to put a finger on some of the points that really diminished my enjoyment of this book:

First of all, the number of characters. We have a ton of sidekicks, that are too present not to want to know more about them, yet the information the reader receives about them is in titbits at max and it led to me being either annoyed that I didn’t get the tragic backstory or me being completely indifferent about the characters the author clearly wanted me to care about – no in-between. Not only did we have an enormous cast of sidekicks, we had close to the same number of antagonists and some of them lost their threat rather surprisingly (not in a good way, but in a “let me introduce this new bigger villain but without explaining why it’s a bigger threat” way). If a villain loses his power of his victims by empowering those, that’s fine but was only done well in one case in this book. The rest felt like “uh, got tired of this one, take this new bigger one instead”. Discarding old, feared antagonists without delivering a proper explanation on how that happened unfortunately is a pet peeve of mine.

The same argument of “too much, not enough” applied for me to the plot in general: Sometimes plotlines and scenes felt like stalling, sometimes they were utterly redundant and sometimes they had the feeling to them as if the author had noticed a loose end that still needed to be taken care of. It was sloppily done at best in these cases and ties in with the previous point of critique: I probably would have cared more about these scenes, if the majority did not happen “behind closed doors” for the reader. That is a useful tool, but not if it’s the only one you keep sharp in your box.

A few of those plotlines just felt like they were there but they did not really matter and I was sad to see that happen, as some of them had the potential of delivering not only more depth to the whole story in general but also tie the reader in even more (Jean, Renee, …). At times also the relation of problem, solution and backlash/collateral damage in some plot-related events felt very disproportionate.

One very big problem for me presented itself in a surprisingly rapid turn of liking Neil to … despising him in parts. The more the foxes grew on me, the more I started to dislike Neil and that was surprising to me. He behaved, true to his past and nature, like a real bastard to his teammates in parts, ignoring boundaries and forcing their hand when he for sure would have lashed out if the roles were reversed. I probably could have lived better with that kind of behaviour if there was any kind of reaction by the team to it, but lacking this Neil just evolved into a proper prick and I very much disliked his utter lack of respect for boundaries if they were not his or Andrew’s.

That being said, my boy Andrew is the only reason I partially enjoyed this finale. I don’t care how hard you judge that, but I related to him an alarming amount of times and he is by far my favourite of the bunch, before Nicky and Wymack in a tie.

The reason for a rating like this with having that many points of critique also is to be found in some of the quotes this book delivers. Quite a few times it hit a bit too close to home for comfort, but I didn’t hurt as much as I expected to.

All in all, I would still recommend this series! But I would be very careful to whom.

Leonie

Finishing this book took me a lot, and I mean a lot, longer than I thought it would. Being the longest out of the series it shouldn’t have surprised me, but somehow The King’s Men did a “turn-tables”-move on my expectations in general. Going in, after #2 of the trilogy, I expected to be in pain for the full ride of it. That … did not happen. I was mildly uncomfortable at best and that, strange as it may sound, disappointed me, especially considering how hard the end of the second book had hit me. I know now why that might have been the case and I’ll get to that reasoning in a bit. My general impression of this finale was, very shortened, too long, too much happened, and it lacked so much depth. Sprinkle annoyance about the style of writing and questionable plot choices on top and now we have the disappointing finale for a series I so far really enjoyed.

First of all, the style – oh boy. Book 1 and 2 didn’t leave me enough breathing room to even consider this, but as the third book tended to be dragging in quite a few chapters, a reader suddenly notices repetitive writing, poor choice of words or using the same descriptions (or none at all?) over and over again. Culminating in a paragraph I highlighted in which 5 out of 6 sentences started with the same name. This gets old really quick.

In the first two books, I lived for the banter. This flattened out here so much I’m not sure there even was any left. At least not in a way that was quick-witted enough to leave me chuckling – or remembering it.

Talking it through I was finally able to put a finger on some of the points that really diminished my enjoyment of this book:

First of all, the number of characters. We have a ton of sidekicks, that are too present not to want to know more about them, yet the information the reader receives about them is in titbits at max and it led to me being either annoyed that I didn’t get the tragic backstory or me being completely indifferent about the characters the author clearly wanted me to care about – no in-between. Not only did we have an enormous cast of sidekicks, we had close to the same number of antagonists and some of them lost their threat rather surprisingly (not in a good way, but in a “let me introduce this new bigger villain but without explaining why it’s a bigger threat” way). If a villain loses his power of his victims by empowering those, that’s fine but was only done well in one case in this book. The rest felt like “uh, got tired of this one, take this new bigger one instead”. Discarding old, feared antagonists without delivering a proper explanation on how that happened unfortunately is a pet peeve of mine.

The same argument of “too much, not enough” applied for me to the plot in general: Sometimes plotlines and scenes felt like stalling, sometimes they were utterly redundant and sometimes they had the feeling to them as if the author had noticed a loose end that still needed to be taken care of. It was sloppily done at best in these cases and ties in with the previous point of critique: I probably would have cared more about these scenes, if the majority did not happen “behind closed doors” for the reader. That is a useful tool, but not if it’s the only one you keep sharp in your box.

A few of those plotlines just felt like they were there but they did not really matter and I was sad to see that happen, as some of them had the potential of delivering not only more depth to the whole story in general but also tie the reader in even more (Jean, Renee, …). At times also the relation of problem, solution and backlash/collateral damage in some plot-related events felt very disproportionate.

One very big problem for me presented itself in a surprisingly rapid turn of liking Neil to … despising him in parts. The more the foxes grew on me, the more I started to dislike Neil and that was surprising to me. He behaved, true to his past and nature, like a real bastard to his teammates in parts, ignoring boundaries and forcing their hand when he for sure would have lashed out if the roles were reversed. I probably could have lived better with that kind of behaviour if there was any kind of reaction by the team to it, but lacking this Neil just evolved into a proper prick and I very much disliked his utter lack of respect for boundaries if they were not his or Andrew’s.

That being said, my boy Andrew is the only reason I partially enjoyed this finale. I don’t care how hard you judge that, but I related to him an alarming amount of times and he is by far my favourite of the bunch, before Nicky and Wymack in a tie.

The reason for a rating like this with having that many points of critique also is to be found in some of the quotes this book delivers. Quite a few times it hit a bit too close to home for comfort, but I didn’t hurt as much as I expected to.

All in all, I would still recommend this series! But I would be very careful to whom.

The King's Men All for the Game, Book 3

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