The Champions

By: Kara Thomas

Narrated by: 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.

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.

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.