What would you kill for?

The New York Times bestselling author of Night Film spins a twisted web in this masterful YA psychological thriller about the dark legacy of a notorious games designer.

A seemingly ordinary high school student. A mysterious summer internship. And a legendary games designer, now dead.

When an ad for an internship with the Louisiana Veda Foundation appears, Arcadia ‘Dia’ Gannon rushes to apply. Veda’s game-making empire, Darkly, was renowned for its ingenious and terrifying games back in the day and Dia is as obsessed with them as anyone.

The remaining games are priced like highly sought-after works of art, with the rarest and most notorious commanding tens of millions of dollars at auction. Now, Dia is thrust into the enigmatic heart of the operation. But who are these other interns? Why do they all seem to have something to hide? And why was she really chosen? It soon becomes clear that this summer will be the most twisted Darkly game of all.

Back in the 1980s, games designer Louisiana Veda created board games for her company Darky that were weird, unusual, and wanted by everyone. She was the ‘It’ woman of the gaming world—that was until a series of sad circumstances occurred, starting with the theft of one of her most precious and never-released games and ending with her mysterious death.

Years later the stolen game has resurfaced and people are playing it. However, if you win you disappear, just like teenager George Grenfell. The Louisiana Veda Foundation was set up to find 7 interns whose job will be to uncover where the game is but they will have to play it to succeed.

Arcadia Gannon (Dia) is one such intern who will live on the Darkly Island just off the coast of England with the other interns and where Louisiana’s now empty factory stands. But all is not what it seems and the interns will have to be brave and dig deep to discover the truth and work their way through various puzzles.

Darkly by Marisha Pessl is a gripping and exciting YA novel and a total thrill ride. It is suspenseful and mind-bending, and I couldn’t help rushing through it. The world-building is just perfect, and the cast, especially Dia, is truly wonderful and realistic. The other secondary characters all brought something to the table, including the boat ferry captain and even smug, posh Poe.

There are snippets of old newspaper cuttings throughout, as well as some letters that give you some hints about the story, so make sure you read them. Overall, I adored Darkly. It is totally different from my usual reads. My tiny complaint is that I didn’t like the ending. I understood it; I just wasn’t a fan.

Marisha Pessl is a New York Times bestselling author known for her intricate, genre-defying mysteries.

Her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, was selected as one of the New York Times best books of the year, and her subsequent works, Night Film and Neverworld Wake, have solidified her reputation as a storyteller with a knack for blending suspense and literary elegance.

She is the winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and her books have been translated into more than 30 languages. She lives in New York with her family.