Still working on next blog

Hi, all it has taken me a bit longer to reread the second "The Game" book by A.J Carella than I thought. I plan to have that post out by the middle of the week. I was wondering with all the controversy over anything about slavery and the south that I was going to give my thoughts on the movie Gone With The Wind. Would any of you reading this blog be interested in that leave a comment below and or like this post, Thank you all, and stay safe out there where your mask in public and practice social distancing so this COVID 19 issue can finally stop and not spread. 

"The game" she did not want to play, but to save a friend she will

Life is sometimes a game and people have no choice but to play. The Game by Shane Scollins is a mystery/thriller with an unpredictable paranormal twist. It has action and adventure and plays up the everyday exploitation of reality television obsession gone wrong. 

Caution may contain spoilers! I try my best in these reviews not to give out to many important details or the endings of books, but sometimes it happens

No matter where you are, they’ll find you, and put you in “The GAME”. 

Candice Laguna’s life is being systematically dismantled, by an unknown force, for a reason she can’t imagine. But she is about to become the unwilling star of a reality game competition the likes of which has never been broadcast to the world. Just when things get darkest, a mysterious man snatches her from the grips of doom. He is a man who is not what he appears, and not who he says. He has no name and his motivation to help Candice is not what it seems to be. 

    Candice a normal girl just living her life starts getting strange and unnerving phone calls. She breaks up with her boyfriend Eddie in the second chapter of the book she told him they don't connect and he does not get her like he should. Her best friend Zyanna of Russian descent ends up taking her home from work after the breakup. She continued to get the phone calls one time it was a little girl's voice wanting Candy to play with her next it was an old man's voice saying asking don't you remember me, then it was a younger guy saying he wanted her sounding like a psychopath. The next time she got a call it was a guy's voice and he told her everything she was wearing so he could somehow see her. She went to go report this to the police and they said they look into it.

    When the police pulled the phone records it showed no such calls were even made at the time Candice said they were or at all. So the police that she was crazy or something. So Candice decides to stay at her friend's house so the police can go into her place and check for hidden cameras and stuff since the stalker caller could see her but nothing was found. 

    The mastermind behind these calls is Angus and he has several people on his team, even though he does not like them. He needs their help with the running of his so-called game a social reality experience as he calls it. He is upset at the world for their enjoyment of reality TV and social media and because he got put into a mental institution and people said he was crazy. He wants payback for what he suffered through. 

    Candice kept getting the calls and then got fired from her job claiming that her computer was used to breach security in the bank records yet no money has been stolen yet. The stalker called again and basically admitting to getting her fired in order to break her will before she enters the game. He also said she asked for him to do this to her. Then she finds out her bank account has been drained and frozen and her car gets towed away. She soon gets another call this time with a video message showing they have kidnapped her best friend Zee and to not tell the police or she would be killed. Not to mentioned she keeps remembering how her family got torn apart after the death of her brother. 

    The police officer Spencer Webb finds Candice at Zee's house and asks her if she has seen Eddie and tells her that he was murdered. Candice is told to go to a record store and get the CD called The New Bomb Turks. Then she gets a phone call telling her to go to a coffee shop someone is told to meet up with her and take her to a different location which happens to be a warehouse. They are supposed to wait there for orders but Vince a former police officer and his friend Alexis followed Candice to help her out of this situation because Alexis has to go through these same things some months ago when her sister killed herself. 

    Candice did not like this situation and took things into her own hands by hitting her capture in the face and running away. She hit him again with a paperweight and ran to the outside door. Then Vince got out of his car and shot Mark and they put Candice in their car put him in his trunk and drowned the vehicle. They went back to the record store and to an apartment above where Vince lives. Candice gets a call from Angus asking what happened to Mark she says he stepped out and he asked where she was and said in NJ but he knew she was lying and back in NYC he also says he will harm her friend Zee.  

    They went to sleep and when Candice woke up she smelt smoke she woke Alexis up and they all escaped out the bathroom window they drove to a motel and slept. Candice woke up to the doorknob being turned she woke up the others and they hid when the door opened Vince shot the man. They left and drove around trying to figure out how they found them at the motel they stop at a diner to eat Alexis stays in the car. When they get done eating and go back to the car Alexis is gone she was kidnapped. Vince takes Candice to a friend of his who finds out when she went to the dentist he put a tiny tracker device in her filling. They were able to get it removed. 

    Angus was monitoring Candice her tracking dot vanished from the screen. Then he looked at his players for his game in their cells and one was not moving and they found out she was dead. Back with Candice and Vince, they decided to talk to the dentist. Candice demanded to know everything he acted like he didn't know anything so she cut him with a knife. He tells them all about Rena and what she asked him to look for in a woman subject and they pay him and he tells them that they work out of a warehouse in Fair Lawn. 

    Vince and Candice get to the warehouse and just knock on the door. The door opens for them and they find Angus inside he is surprised they are at his doorstep. He tells Candice she is strong and he chose her to be his star in a reality game he devised. He says she has to play in order for her friend to get out of harm's way and not be killed. Detective Webb was still looking into Candice's case finding out that the document to seize her car and assets were faked and that got the FBI involved in trying to figure out who TRK consulting is. 

    Candice and Vince were talking when Rena walks in and see Candice. Angus tells her who Vince was and she pulls out her gun and shoots him and then Caleb the villain of the game walks in. Candice was put into a cell to wait for the game to start she woke up and found her clothes had been cut up and there was a camera in the cell. Angus told her she was in the old mental facility and told why he was doing this social experiment to show the world how 

    Vince opens his eyes and he clawed out of the grave he did not fully understand why when he was killed he came back to life and then soon was transported into someone else's body and life but he looked the same to himself. He had to figure out what Angus was up to and how he was connected to him. In the transition stage where he was basically a ghost traveling anywhere really fast. He found Candice's cell and willed himself to be visible. When Candice opened her eyes and saw Vince she was confused he explained to her his situation of how he can die then come back to life as someone else. Vince told her that he can't remember his first life, besides his name Lukas and that he was pretty sure Angus has some connection to him. 

   

 Lukas wakes up and he is an apartment where he finds out he is now named Craig. He finds a suicide note that says something about a person named Cassie and a dog named Orion all he wanted to do was leave to get back to Candice. Candice woke up and her cell opened and the loudspeaker told them where to go. She found Alexis and the host introduced the other women who were a contestant in this so-called game. There was a wheel spun to fight out which girl would be playing the game first and Missy was chosen and the audience can participate by texting saying they want to save her and put someone else in the game. 

    The game started and the announcer talked about The Circle of Pain bonus round and Candice became the contestant and was told to stay in the circle for one minute or someone dies. There was an abrupt flame of fire that circled around her then balls of fire started being thrown at her. She was able to endure the treatment for the whole minute so none else got hurt.

Well gonna stop review here as to not give away the ending. It does end happily for the most part as most books do. Candice does go thru some stuff after the game that makes her and Lukas more connected. It also gets a bit weirder when a guy named Kellogg shows up and asks them to do something. So in this story, I said everything is basically you can look at humans as a whole on the so-called game of life. 

One observation I read from the book was this quote that I enjoyed "God is a complex concept. On one hand, we want him to explain everything. On the other hand, we want to think we carve our own destiny. We thank God for the good and blame God for the bad We want it both ways. He or she or Them.... they don't discriminate... Only religion does that.

That statement really made me think cause we had humans do that so often it a common thing I hear from Christians and people of other religions we need to decide for ourselves what we want to do with our lives and not solely rely on some higher power for all the answers. 

If you like to know how this book ends You can go find it on amazon and here is the link: Amazon Or if your too busy and don't have the time comment below and I will send a comment back and talk to you about how this book ends. 

All in all, this is a good book it does end kinda odd but happily, and can get boring in spots, but the messages it has about life and how games work and are perceived are true. 

So this was the review for the first book entitled "The Game" the next one will be the one by A. J Carella and I hope to have it up by next week sometime depends on how long it takes me to reread the book. 

The Game 3 Part Series

     Hi, all I been meaning to talk about these 3 books I read. They all have the same title "The Game" and funny enough they were all published in 2013. We as humans love to play and watch games and there are so very many out there to choose from.

    What is it about games that draw us in whether it be a video one, or board, or sports, or something else. We as humans thrive on competition and the ability to make and control some characters to escape reality. Now more than ever with COVID 19 and having to the social distance we rely on these kinds of things more than ever to past the time feel like we are living, but some games you don't want to play and are forced to anyway and they can turn deadly.

    I am going to review the books in order of when they were published. These books are similar and yet unique all dealing with some kind of game being played whether the participants want to or not. 

     The first one was published on March 11, 2013, written by Shane Scollins. 

     This book is a mystery/thriller about a girl forced to play a game that the whole world can is in reality TV. 

    The second one published on September 12, 2013, written by A.J Carella. This book is romance suspense about two people are thrown together by fate and the boy has to save the girl from a mysterious man forcing her to play his game. 

    The Third one published on December 24, 2013, written by Terry Schott. This story is about a boy whose life is played in virtual reality as a form of schooling and getting ranked. He and the other players do not know this until there life is over. 

    If you all have any questions or comment leave them below hope to have the first blog post up the middle of next week but I do have to refresh and kinda reread each book. If you enjoy this blog like, subscribe and share it with your friends.