This is your evening. Your game. Your moment. Seize it with everything you have. Do your very best and risk everything. Fight because you don’t now how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose.

What do you get when you mix a gritty organized crime backstory with the usual underdog sports story? A masterpiece, that’s what. Seriously, it shouldn’t work, but Neil Josten is a spectacular narrator and absolutely makes me believe that a guy who is actively being hunted by a serial killer would still make a sport his top priority.

Unpopular opinion, but you can pry the 5 star quality rating from my cold dead hands. I don’t care if you won’t take my opinion on literature seriously after this, but I genuinely don’t agree this is badly written. Badly researched? Yes, absolutely, this is not how the real world works, especially anything to do with drugs, but I have never un-suspended my disbelief since the day I was born, so that takes nothing away from the story for me. Otherwise, the worst of its crimes (from a technical standpoint) is a clunky exposition at the beginning of the second book. The plot is wack and only works when you’re into underdog sports stories, found family, and mafia books, but if it works it works.

The strong point of this trilogy are the characters and their dynamics with each other. They’re all insane. Most of them do horrible things. Both of those things deeply affect their dynamics with each other, and manage to make them into something addictively unique. There’s one of the most beautiful love stories I ever read in here, and it only works because it is so very non-traditional. There are siblings who’d kill for each other but are incapable of having a conversation. “Old friends” who make me cry just thinking about them. The single most toxic pair of codependent siblings to ever walk the earth. Friendships that take a while to form and grow and still probably look weird to an outsider, parents who choose to adopt every wayward child that comes their way. The found family in these books is a love letter to everyone who ever thought they were incapable of having normal relationships with people, for whatever reason—you can build your own family, to your own rules.

All For The Game is a story about perseverance and finding a home, but most importantly, it’s a story about Exy, because remember: no matter who wants to kill you or when your exams are, that random sport you’re obsessed with should always be your top priority.