Five years ago, Donny put his friends Sam, Kenny, and Miles through a club challenge in a race from New York to California. Now, Sam is attending Kenny’s funeral and runs into Donny. While they are chatting, a lawyer representing Kenny approaches both of them with Kenny’s club challenge from beyond the grave. Kenny had become rich from Cryptocurrency trading and had hidden a hard drive with his money for them to find. However, the island it is buried on is very hostile with an uncontacted native tribe known for killing intruders still living there. Despite these dangers, Sam and Donny make their way and fly across to the island. But as they do so, Sam’s canopy catches fire and he crashes into the ground leaving him bruised, battered and wondering how he is going to survive getting off the island, let alone finding the crypto drive with the money on it.

Sam’s Game is a quick and clever thriller with a fun twist in the tale. The story starts off with a great little intro before, setting things up before heading into the main story. This is a cleverly thought out story and the action ebbs and flows quickly from setup to payoff. The ideas behind the story may have been done several times before, but this is a well executed story. The twist, when it does come, may be half expected, but it is still carried off with good explanation and it fits the story without feeling forced. Needless to say I will admit to a certain amount of delight in watching the aftermath unfurl. There are only a few characters but each one fits their part convincingly. Sam is a surprisingly realistic person, who finds themself caught up in this experience and reacting as you might expect. The mixture of bravado and nerves as he ventures out and his thoughts and feelings help to paint the world as he sees it. The writing is a great part of why I enjoyed the book. It doesn’t linger around, but neatly varies the pace and settings of the story and keeping me hooked through to the end.

The formatting of the book is fine, the chapters are neatly broken up and there are only a couple of placing where the editing has needed to be fixed, which makes for an easy read. There are no author’s notes or other suggested works, just the tale itself. Overall, if you like short thrillers, this one will be for you as an excellent coffee break read that can be read a few times to get all the nuances out of it. As a sharp, snappy read, I certainly enjoyed my brief time following these characters.