ray ౨ৎ's Reviews > Games Untold: An Inheritance Games Collection

games untold ⋆ ★★★.75 ⋆ 13+
⤿ finished on 12.11.24

꒰💝꒱ um…explain to me how my xmas books that I was reading in December took me weeks to read and then I eat up this 400+ page book in 3 days? Because JLB wrote this, duh 🤭 anyways, this is one of the cutest novella compilations i’ve ever read. Like broken throne and happily ever after is nothing compared to this, and it’s bcz i’ve become so attached to these characters that despite this being an obvious money grab I still loved this and would do anything to get my JLB books signed (please have a book tour for glorious rivals jennifer !!) also, the quotes and illustrations at the beginning of each novella/short story?!?! Jennifer is spoiling us omggggg. also, I think it’s so cool how there’s a timeline at the beginning of this collection !!


⋆˙⟡ i. that night in prague
⤿ ★★★★★

I love how I was planning on reading my crs the night that I started this book and ended up picking games untold telling myself I would only read a couple chapters, which turned into like 5, which turned into reading this whole entire novella. like i ATE UP the averyjameson scenes in this. It was such a good way to start off this collection !! I absolutely loved being back in avery’s pov, i missed it after reading the brothers hawthorne and the grandest game. this was so entertaining !! basically our fave fmc Avery is in Prague with Jameson, and they make challenges for each other, and in the middle of Jamie figuring out Avery’s he’s gone. There’s before and after scenes and TONS of romance that had me giggling and kicking my feet at 1:00 in the morning, and i reread my fave bantery and cutesy scenes over and over again, and even showed my bookish friends some of my fave parts (i have the page numbers memorized…) like this was absolutely perfect and had no plot but also set up the brother’s hawthorne in a way? idk how to do this novella justice with this review but if you take anything from this take this: this was pure perfection in paper and ink form <3


❝ like the sun and the moon, i loved her. saint avery. until death and beyond ❞



⋆˙⟡ ii. the same backward as forward
⤿ ★★★.75

when I heard that there would be a toby x hannah novella in this collection I was so excited, I became invested in the story of them in the hawthorne legacy. in fact, I remember me laying in bed, laying snuggled in bed with a box of tissues next to me, sobbing while reading toby explaining the lore while listening to TTPD, which made the situation worse. no, i’m not overexaggerating, i actually did have a box of tissues. so long london wasn’t exactly the best choice while reading <3 but back to the review. I read that jennifer lynn barnes wanted to do this couple justice, knowing that she couldn’t write an enemies-to-lovers novella if it was as short as the other stories in this collection, and rightfully made this story 190 pages. It did feel dragged out and got boring at times, but I get why she had to make it this long, otherwise it would be rushed and the enemies part wouldn’t be believable. and the ending omg !! i swear, it was so sad and now I have major withdrawal issues 😭 it starts with hannah meeting toby and the people he went to hawthorne island with her sister kaylie, and then hannah helping toby recover from the fire, and then well…the not-so-happy-ending. and the games/challenges that they played together were so cute, and it reminded me of hannah and avery


❝ i loved you when the world was pain and the only thing that made sense was your eyes. i loved you before i knew to hate myself, and i have loved you every day since ❞



⋆˙⟡ iii. the cowboy and the goth
⤿ ★★★☆☆

I gotta admit, throughout the series I just didn’t see the nashlibby hype. I didn’t hate them, ofc, but it’s just that there was barely any crumbs of them, it was like the size of granulated sugar instead, but this cute little short story gave me a reason too !! there was barely like any scenes, but it was cool to see libby’s thoughts throughout the series and then before grandest game. and the magic 8 ball 🥺 it was acc so cute i can’t– anyways, if you’re a nashlibby stan I think you would really eat this up !! 🫶

❝ he brings his lips to just almost touch mine, a silent reminder that i don’t have to say a word, that he has never and will never demand from me anything that i don’t want to give ❞



⋆˙⟡ iv. five times xander tackled someone (& one time he didn’t)
⤿ ★★★☆☆

this was so cute omg !! the first time he tackled was him as a toddler and pretending to be a sloth (how can you get more cute than that?) and the rest were brotherly love ones that made me giggle because it was genuinely funny, and the one time he didn’t was with max hehe 🤭 and it was also in max’s third person pov too !! xander (and max) nation truly won with this short story fr <3


❝ maxine liu was absolutely, positively not going to show xander hawthorne her tattoo–the very nerdy, extremely secret tattoo she’d admitted to hours earlier in hawthorne chutes and ladders ❞



⋆˙⟡ v. one hawthorne night
⤿ ★★☆☆☆

Do you remember Grayson not going to Xander’s 911 in the final gambit? the one where he wanted the brothers to do karaoke? Well, he basically got punished by his brothers for it, and that’s what this short story is about !! gray got a makeover by Avery and Thea (and kept complaining about how it hurt to be around Avery 🙄) and did karaoke and sang taylor swift (nash chose shake it off 🤭)


❝ leather pants grayson was not going to become a meme ❞



⋆˙⟡ vi. $3CR3T $@NT@
⤿ ★★★.75

this was so fun to read !! it’s set the first christmas after the final gambit, and also the first time avery and libby play Hawthorne Secret Santa !! It’s like the game Assassins, the players draw a name, and that’s your target. You have to get the perfect gift for your target, and then your target is out of the game. If you squirt whoever has you as their target they are out of the game for 3 days. It was so fun to see the players get the perfect gift for them, and it was so sweet to read about !! 🥺


❝ ‘also for the record: if you thought that this room escaped the mistletoe treatment…’ he looked pointedly upward. ‘you were wrong’ ❞



⋆˙⟡ vii. what happens in the treehouse
⤿ ★★★☆☆

ahhhh this was so fun to read !! i love a good hawthorne brother bonding session, and this did not disappoint <3 this edition of the hawthorne brother chronicles is titled ‘nash’s bachelor party’ lolllllll. But in all seriousness, this was so cute !! and I quite literally melted when the brothers were afraid of things being different once nash got married 🥺 and their would you rathers were so hawthorne coded but also concerning…


❝ ‘what happens in the tree house…’ grayson said, his voice thick with emotion. ‘stays in the tree house,’ xander, jameson, and nash finished as one ❞



⋆˙⟡ viii. pain at the right gun
⤿ ★☆☆☆☆

this is basically 7 pages of what jamie was doing when he disappeared in that night in prague, and it’s saur confusing and I genuinely had no idea what was going on. also, alice better not ruin things in glorious rivals

❝ questions were meant to be answered, mysteries solved. and when your last name was hawthorne, there was always one more mystery ❞


*ೃ༄


PS: did you find the anagram in a night in prague?

PSS: sry to those waiting for my tig reviews, i js haven’t found the time 😭😭😭



games untold ⋆ pre-read
↳ started on 12.09.24

꒰💝꒱ ALL of my crs were boring me out *cough* Talk Santa to Me *cough* NLTM, so on an impulse when I chose a book to pick out to read at night I chose this one, and I don’t regret it at all. The first novella? Finished it in one sitting. Man, did I miss averyjameson. And a xmas novella?!? hehe 🤭 this pulled me out of my reading slump. I think I’m gonna read a novella a day. Also, the B&N edition is pink and it’s saur cutesy !!