"The Champion" by Kara Thomas

Sunnybrook, thought by many to be a perfect, championship winning town, has a dark truth most people haven’t been exposed to. Sunnybrook, a small town known for its national and state winning football and dance team, is a town coveted by most who hear of it. When football players suddenly die, Hadley and her friend Peter make it their goal to discover the dark secrets of the town and who the football players really are. Kara Thomas, best known for her 2018 novel The Cheerleaders, lives in Long Island with her husband, son, and rescue cat. Kara, born on March 21st, 1990, is known for her young adult mystery/thriller novels. According to Writer’s Digest article on Kara Thomas: You Only Get One Chance at Your Debut Novel, Kara wrote the book The Champions because she was inspired by real events that took place at her own high school in 2012. Although a scandal did take place with Kara’s high school football team, no murders happened, and it was a cheating scandal between her teachers and the football players. 

The book takes place in Sunnybrook, a town known for its award winning football and dance team. While the football and dance players are viewed as perfect in many’s eyes, Hadley, a misfit, knows that the “perfect” people aren’t who they seem to be. As football players begin to suddenly die, Hadley knows something is up. She and her friend Peter, decide to do some research to reveal the secrets of the sudden deaths and find out if the football team really is “perfect”. Through their discoveries, they find out that the football team is part of a major cheating scandal. When a young girl named Hadley has her eyes set on becoming the lead of her school’s press, she starts to receive strange messages. After receiving these messages, Hadley became determined to figure out who was behind this. Through her initial discoveries, Hadley uncovers many more dark secrets about her beloved town. Hadley, whose mom is the superintendent of schools, is often overlooked by kids at her school and doesn’t really have friends. Hadley wants to be a journalist writing for the New York Times when she grows up. To practice her writing skills, Hadley loves to attend newspaper club and she has her eye on becoming the new editor-in-chief, battling her enemy Peter. When Hadley starts to get mysterious emails from an unknown sender, she focuses on solving who is sending her these messages and what this mystery person is trying to convey with her messages. Hadley tells Peter about the messages and they team up to discover who is behind them. When Logan and Gavin die, Hadley and Peter continue to work together to solve the mystery of their deaths. As they figure out more and more clues, they discover who killed who and they learn about more secrets the football team has been hiding such as the cheating scandal, proving Sunnybrook to not be the perfect town they are depicted as. 

 The Champions had a great plot and it was intriguing to keep finding out more secrets about the kids considered perfect in their town. The cliff hangers kept me interested the whole time and made me not want to close the book. There was never a time where I didn’t want to keep reading. Discovering the many secrets of the town’s dark backstory left me shocked and wanting to learn more about who the people of the town really are. I recommend buying this book due to the interesting mysteries uncovered throughout the story. You are kept entertained from beginning to finish, discovering all the secrets of the somewhat perfect town. Overall, this is a mystery book I would definitely recommend because of the plot twists, and mysteries solved throughout the book. The Champions is a super well written novel that leaves you wanting to know more after every page you turn.