Think Tuition Prices are Scary? Check out The Finalists (thriller book REVIEW)

I don’t have kids, but if I did? My biggest worry would probably be how I was gonna put them through college. 

Going to university has never been a guarantee in the U.S., but over the last couple of decades, costs have skyrocketed… meaning you either have to be born into money, qualify for a great scholarship, or go into serious debt, to get a degree.

So imagine all the things that might happen if a small, private university held a contest each year—one that only a select few students were even invited to compete in—with the grand prize being everything… a full-ride, plus a year’s employment at a powerful corporation, after graduation.

That’s the premise of David Bell’s thriller, The Finalists, one of the most of-the-moment suspense novels I’ve read in a long time.

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It’s a typical spring day—hot, sunny, and beautiful—in Eastern Kentucky, when a group of six college students make their way across campus to the prestigious old Victorian heap otherwise known as Hyde House, for a shot at the coveted Hyde Fellowship—a full scholarship (and subsequent year of employment) only offered to an elite few, each year.

As in years past, the contestants represent every subset—a brainiac; a slam-dunk, with all the right connections; a jock; the totally-woke, P.C. person; a by-the-book rule-follower; and an iconoclast, who gets off on not following the herd. 

The rules of the game? Everyone hands over their cell phones once inside, and the doors are locked—from the outside—for the next eight hours, as the contest takes place. 

This year will be a little different, though: instead of the current rep from the Hyde Foundation (Nicholas Hyde, the profligate sole heir to the mega-corporation) presiding alone—conducting interviews, assessing the students, and making a final decision—he has decided to include the university’s administrator in charge of retention, funding, and such, in the proceedings… for the first time, ever.

What not a single one of them realizes? The fact that this year, not everyone will be making it out alive.

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I’ll be honest: if I’d been the editor, I would’ve made some changes in The Finalists, because there are definitely some areas that could’ve used improvement. But, it still held my interest well enough to see it through to the end—to get to that whodunnit, dang it!—so I’m giving The Finalists an easy passing grade… and recommending it to everyone who’s gone to college, or has their own mini-me’s, who at some point will.

~GlamKitty