Book Info
The Champions by Kara Thomas
Genre: Young Adult Thriller
Publishing Date: August 27, 2024
Synopsis
From the author of The Cheerleaders comes another dark YA thriller set in the same town of Sunnybrook. When a mysterious accident befalls a member of the all-star high school football team, the town’s deadly history stands to repeat itself—and the price of discovering the truth is higher than anyone could imagine. It was the deaths of five cheerleaders that made the town of Sunnybrook infamous. Eleven years later, the girls’ killer has been brought to justice, and the town just wants to move on. By the time Hadley moves to Sunnybrook, though, the locals are more interested in the Tigers, the high school’s championship-winning football team. The Tigers are Sunnybrook’s homegrown heroes–something positive in a town with so much darkness in its past. Hadley could care less about football, but shortly after she gets assigned to cover the team’s latest championship bid for the school newspaper, one of the Tigers is poisoned at a party, and almost immediately after, Hadley starts getting strange emails warning her to stay far away from the football team. It’s becoming clear Sunnybrook’s golden boys have secrets, and after a second player is mysteriously killed, Hadley’s beginning to suspect that someone wants the team to pay for their sins. Or does this new target on the football team have something to do with what happened to the cheerleaders all those years ago?As an outsider in Sunnybrook, Hadley feels like she’s the only one who can see the present clearly, but it looks like she’s going to have to dig up the darkness of the past to get to the bottom of what’s happening now. Luckily, there are still some Sunnybrook High grads who never left–people who were around eleven years ago—and if she can just convince them to talk, she might be able stop a killer before another Tiger dies.
Content Warning: sexual assault, bullying, death, cheating, toxic relationships, car accident, abortion
Book Links
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205181079
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0593379977
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-champions-kara-thomas/1144624036?ean=9780593379974
IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-champions-kara-thomas/21036785
About the Author
Kara is the author of The Darkest Corners, Little Monsters, and The Cheerleaders. She is also the author of the Prep School Confidential series from St. Martin’s Griffin under the pen name Kara Taylor.
Kara has written for Warner Brothers Television and currently writes full-time on Long Island, where she lives with her husband and rescue cat.
Author Links
Website: https://www.kara-thomas.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karathomaswrites/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14047408
Why Should You Read It?
Kara Thomas delivers another chilling and gripping thriller in The Champions, set in the same haunting town of Sunnybrook as her previous novel, The Cheerleaders. This time, Thomas shifts the focus from the infamous cheerleader deaths to the high school’s all-star football team, the Tigers, who are celebrated as local heroes. When a mysterious poisoning at a party leaves one of the players fighting for his life, newcomer Hadley is thrust into the dangerous web of secrets surrounding the team. As she digs deeper, the dark past of Sunnybrook begins to resurface, and the lines between the present tragedy and the past massacre become disturbingly blurred.
Hadley’s relentless pursuit of the truth, despite warnings and threats, makes her a compelling lead in this dark YA thriller. The Champions expertly builds suspense, weaving together the sinister underbelly of small-town dynamics and the lengths people will go to in order to protect their own. Thomas keeps readers on edge with her trademark blend of mystery, high stakes, and twists, making it hard to predict what will happen next. Fans of The Cheerleaders and psychological thrillers will find The Champions a satisfying, suspense-filled read that pulls back the layers of Sunnybrook’s darkness.