The Champions

De: Kara Thomas

Narrado por: Brittany Pressley

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.

©2024 Kara Thomas (P)2024 Listening Library

Addictive who dun it ya murder mystery

Couldn’t stop listening!! Loved the cryptic anonymous emails! Had me on the edge of my seat and craving to figure out the dark secrets of Sunnybrook high school.

the book

Its like ice cream, you just can't put it down no matter how badly you want to

the best who done it book that keep me guessing untill the end.

amazing book. I love the author of this book . she did a amazing job . I finish it in one day . I could not stop untill I knew who the killer was. great post and mystery.

An entertaining mystery

I enjoyed this book, but I did find it a bit predictable at times. Still, there were other elements that were surprising, which was more satisfying. The narrator did a great job.

Pitch perfect

THE CHAMPIONS is the companion book to Kara Thomas’s THE CHEERLEADERS that I didn’t realize how much I needed.

Thomas hits a grand slam with THE CHAMPIONS, set 6 years after THE CHEERLEADERS ended.

School newspaper editor Hadley competes with her rival Peter (younger half-brother of Monica from THE CHEERLEADERS) stumble upon wrongdoings by their two time champion football team starting with the coach down to the star players. Then the players start dying.

I’ve loved every one of Thomas’s YA mysteries. I’ve enjoyed her adult thrillers, but they don’t grab me like her YA. I hope Thomas keeps writing YA for years to come.

Kara Thomas does it again

After I finished the cheerleaders I got swept up with life until I remembered about my audible account — and my audible subscription. With over 10 credits accumulated I didn’t know what to listen to, but thankfully this book was recommended and I was delighted to find out a sequel to the cheerleaders was made. Just like the cheerleaders, I was hooked from start to finish. I listen to music, podcasts, and audio books while at work only, but I found myself listening to this story while doing day to day things like cleaning and folding laundry. I was OBSESSED the entire time. The narrator is amazing, so if you like the brief story description but are unsure about the narrator, don’t be!! She does a great job, her voice is easy to listen to and her impersonations of characters really help in immersing the reader. I 100% recommend giving this book a shot!

A disappointing sequel

As someone who really liked The Cheerleaders and loved Little Monsters, this book was sadly a disappointment.

Biggest issue was that this lacked the same emotional stakes and "heart" of The Cheerleaders. The main character doesn't really have a strong emotional connection to the core mystery. It just feels like she's solving the mystery because she's the main character in a mystery novel, as opposed to having a strong, organic motivation.

Most characters don't get much development, and the few that somewhat do don't form any interesting relationships with the POV character. In fact, there really wasn't any interesting relationships in this book in general, which was surprising to me coming from Thomas's other books. In her past books she give the main character some strong relationships dynamics - parent, sibling, friends, which makes them way more relatable and interesting.

Another major issue for me was the pacing. The plot moves VERY slowly. For example, the events in the audible blurb that normally is just the premise of the mystery doesn't fully playout until 2/3+ of the book. This book is about 20% shorter than The Cheerleaders but felt much longer. It doesn't help that the investigation of the mystery happens very passively.

Overall, it was much more predictable than Thomas's other entries too. At the end, the story sort of felt like "the worst people you know did exactly the terrible things you think they'd do"