I enjoyed this book but I had to bump the rating down to 3 stars because Val was painfully stupid. It made a book with a lot of potential, groan worthy. I try to remind myself she was only 14 but it was still painful to read about her walking straight into such a dangerous situation. She then refuses to contact the police and then later, to testify. It reminded me of the horror movies I used to watch where you yell at the screen saying "don't do that, you'll be killed". Then of course, they get killed after doing whatever it was. 
 The book could have been improved a lot if Nenia made Gavin less obvious. Put a bit more mystery into it. Let us work out for ourselves that there was something off about Gavin, rather than being told from the beginning. However, it was clever how Nenia used Gavin's ability with chess to show his motivations and his ability to manipulate.