Small Game audiobook

Imagine a competition: the bleakest, the harshest, the most vicious version of Survivor but the main concept is not only about surviving but also about creating a brand new civilization! A game prepares you the universe Stephen King created at his book; “The Stand”The show is called Civilization. The contenders’ clothes are fast-fashion prehistoric,canvas tunics and matching shorts, all dyed a dusty brown and sandals made of thin leather.The idea is that they'd found one another in the wilderness, this group of strangers, and over the course of six weeks would be tasked with building a new kind of community, something pure and sustainable and right.They would forgo all comforts, so that viewers didn't have to. They would be one with the forest. They would find a way to live.All those cameras that are positioned on trees keep watching their every move! So they can dare cheating! Mara, the main character, already get used to live in the wilderness. She was living in a camper with her ex boyfriend in the woods before getting chosen for the show and dumping him. She’s the experienced, mediocre looking competitor : truly opposite of her rival Ashley who joined the game for fame, inexperienced but extremely hot girl contender. And three male contenders are also chosen specifically: TheEagle Scout Kyle, the white-collar professional James, the old grouch who had a heart of gold: Bullfrog! Why they decide to be a part of the game? For money! For fame! To prove they can survive in the middle of wilderness! To leave their old lives behind and hide in the wilderness! All of them may be the reason fueling them to finish the mission they’d plan to accomplish! One of them left early! Four of them stayed behind! And guess what? Production crew vanished into thin air! Did they think none of them survived so they packed their bags, equipments and ran away! But it doesn’t make sense! What if the producers planned something more sinister to boost their ratings! Buckle up! Get your pop corns and refreshments! This is gonna be highly entertaining wild ride! It was quick, captivating, action packed read reminded of Kiersten White’s Hide: an action packed survival contest concept without supernatural elements! Highly recommended to the readers who are true fan of genre! Special thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I raced through it. It's a terrific survival story that includes an extraordinary level of verisimilitude about edible plants, and fish traps, and how to survive in the wilderness...and it's also the story of human beings who, when faced with the most extreme circumstances imaginable, come together and take care of one another. The people felt so real to me. Usually when there is this much action and plot in a story the characters suffer. Here the internal journies of the characters are as meticulously told as the outward survival story. I'm in awe of Blair Braverman's skill in simultaneously telling both a riveting adventure story as well as this inner story of human faith and resilience. Some books do it all and this is one of them.

I loved this! And just to assert up front because I see a lot of reviews not mentioning it at all: this book is super queer! Also, the ending is great, what are the rest of you talking about?? Okay so back to the beginning: Mara grew up with increasingly paranoid survivalist /  doomsday prepper parents and doesn't really know any other way to live as an adult. She's sharing a camper in the woods with her boyfriend when TV producers come to the survival school where she works, recruiting people to participate in a six-week long survival reality TV show. The show's called Civilization, where five people are supposed to be building a society from the ground up while in the woods with pretty much no supplies. Anyone who makes it to the end gets $100 000. Mara is chosen, along with an older grumpy hunter with a heart of gold, Bullfrog; a math teacher who quits after three days; an earnest 19-year-old Eagle Scout named Kyle; and another woman about her age with nothing more than car camping experience: Ashley, clearly chosen by the producers for her conventional good looks. These characters are all so richly drawn, so much beyond their archetypes, so flawed and so believable. The first half of the book or so is great in its own right. Mara prepares to leave for the show, we learn about her floating numbly through her current existence, and we see the survivors getting to know each other and struggling to come up with a steady food source. This part of the book succeeds as a character study of Mara (including a sort of coming out / falling in love), as an ode to the beauty and harshness of nature, and as a fascinating inside scoop into how these kinds of survival shows work and what they feel like (Blair Braverman should know, she was on Naked and Afraid).Then the second half flips a switch: one day, the survivors wake up and the crew is gone. A few supplies left behind but otherwise nothing. Shit gets real fast. They can no longer quit any time they want. What was a survival game becomes an actual survival test. Ahhh!!! This whole book is immensely readable, a true page-turner if I ever read one. It's so easy to sink into, its story, world, and characters feel effortlessly real, practically and emotionally. Small Game is the kind of book that I could barely put down, but I also hesitated to keep reading, alternately because it was so tense or because I didn't want it to end. Read this book! 

I'm rounding up to a 4 because I enjoyed this book so much......all the way to the end when the author must have been told to finish it now. Unsatisfying ending which taints the whole journey.

The title of this novel suggests dual layers of meaning: apex predator vs. disadvantaged prey, as well as the primal vs. the socialized, especially as they relate to that odd modern concept that is reality TV survivor competition.The author displays an easygoing conversational tone, which is quickly supplanted by the clear gathering of dangerous conflicts. The idea of being in a challenging, yet somewhat controlled environment, is that at least it seems the center will hold, until it doesn't. The author reminds us that cooperation only persists if resources are available to support it. It takes very little stress on the system to unravel the social contract. It's precisely when it all falls apart that we stop the performance of appearances. Perhaps counterintuitively, it is extreme fear and danger which expose the core of the true self. Even we highly evolved beings discover that one of our most central human truths is our inability to live without hope. We are driven, by biological imperative and psychological need, to try to survive.This is Blair Braverman's first work of fiction, after receiving acclaim for her nonfiction work in ethnographic journalism. Many thanks to Ecco Books and #NetGalley for an uncorrected proof copy of this novel.

I love a good survival story. This was a good survival story. Braverman, making her fictional debut, has created a thoroughly immersive world – a middle of nowhere set to be televised for the amusement of the reality tv addicts and five people driven to be cast in the show for very different reasons. Mara, the main protagonist, is there for a fresh start that the prize money would afford her. She’s so very young and yet already tired of her life. A child of survivalist/prepper off-gridder parents turn survival retreat guide for the people with too much money and not enough sense, stuck in a dead-end relationship, no plans, no savings, Mara sees this show as an opportunity to buy a new life. Her teammates/costars are in it for fame, recognition, opportunity to prove themselves. It’s all about second chances, really.The show’s premise isn’t a wildly original one, just another spin on the Survivor. The producer is a creep. But it’s moving along…until it comes to a stop. Suddenly, the cameras are gone, and the cast of the show find themselves alone, abandoned, deliberately or on purpose. Now the real survival begins. Small game - high stakes.All the drama, all the excitement, all the dangers, all the creativity and the desperation come out in cinematic vividness once the camera stop rolling. Once it is no longer a game.Exciting, engaging, entertaining…all the Es of good and great reading, this book is a terrific literary adventure in the wilderness. The writing, the pacing, the characters…all done so well, most impressive for a debut. You won’t want to put this book down and coming in at just under 300 pages and being dynamically paced, you won’t really have to, not much anyway. I read it in one sitting with one pause for lunch and enjoyed it very much. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/

Listen, this book isn't for the faint of heart... it's definitely dark, but also a thriller page turner.You know by now I love a vacation gone wrong and maybe you know I am a die-hard survivor fan. There was no way I was turning down the chance to review a book about four strangers cast in a reality show about surviving!Mara is actually an outdoor teaching professional and is very surprised when the TV producers add her to the cast. When she joins the others, she really doesn't know what to expect of how to act. All she knows is that she desperately needs the prize money. As she learns more about her fellow contestants, reality shows in general and how to get a long with other people, something goes very, very wrong on set. Can the survivors band together and survive this? If you like vacation gone wrong and reality tv based stories you will love Small Game#Ecco #BlairBraverman #SmallGame #Netgalley

Small Game is a quick read about a Survivor-like reality show where 5 blindfolded contestants are dropped off in an unknown location for 6 weeks. The prize money is $100,000.Mara comes from a prepper family and now teaches at a survival school, so when she’s selected as a contestant, she figures she’ll easily win. For the first few weeks, the group perform for the cameras and do as the producer asks. And then one day, everything goes horribly wrong. I read this book in one day and couldn’t read it fast enough. I love survival stories and this one was everything I could have asked for.This was the author’s debut book and I couldn’t get enough! Can’t wait to see what she does next.*Thank you so much to Ecco Books and to NetGalley for like the advance eGalley. Pub date is Nov. 1st, 2022.*

Save me, because I came here to have choices for once, and now I deserve to make them. We all needed a way out. We all needed a way in. Civilization is a new reality show about a group of people who try to survive in the wilderness for six weeks, and it's a competition that Mara is uniquely suited for. Having been raised off the grid, she now works at a survival school, where she teaches wealthy clients how to survive outdoors. When the producers offer her a spot on the show and the chance at life-changing prize money, it doesn't take her long to accept. Only six weeks stand between her and a fresh start, and she's confident in her own abilities.But when the camera crew disappears without a trace halfway through filming, Mara and her companions begin to realize that there is much more at stake than just the prize money. Their survival is no longer just a game, and no help is coming. Small Game is a vivid, character-driven survival story, and once I started it, I couldn't put it down. Blair Braverman loads the plot with interesting information about edible and medicinal plants and survival skills, while also telling a gripping, atmospheric story. The characters are so well-crafted; you can tell how much love Braverman has for them even as she places them in increasingly desperate, dangerous scenarios. I love the dual meaning of the title, too: "small game" as both a reality TV show, meaningless in the big scheme of things, and as the characters being "small game," nothing more than prey in the vastness of the North Woods. This is a book about resilience and survival at its most elemental level, about what happens when you strip away the creature comforts and routines that make up a contemporary life and take a good, hard look at the person you are when that's all gone. It's a book about the importance of human connection and taking care of each other when other people are literally all you have. Ultimately, it's a story not so much about the "why" something terrible happens -- but the way a person responds when something does, the reserves of strength and resiliency deep within the human spirit. Small Game is a book that explores that in riveting, heart-wrenching ways, and I found it to be just as profound as it was propulsive.

It’s The Hunger Games for adults and I’m not mad about it. The protagonist, Mara, joins four strangers as they venture into the woods for reality television and find themselves trapped there, alone. It’s a quintessential survivalist story with risks and grit. Yet, Blair Braverman has tapped into the beating heart of what it means to be human: to love, to long, to exist for one another. While the book starts off a bit stiff, it settles in and transforms into an overture of human emotion and a holy reverence for the things that keep us all alive. I breezed through this read and enjoyed the expansiveness of the narrative; Braverman’s writing made me feel miles away from home and also made me want to hold the ones I love a little tighter. I received this ARC from a bookstore in exchange for a free and honest review.

Survival story that really didn't dig into the action of survival, but the human aspects of how difficult it is, how isolating it can be, and its psychological effects. Potential/slight spoiler: (view spoiler)[Those who despise an unfinished ending or unresolved questions will likely be angry, but this story wasn't about the aftermath, it was about the during, and it worked perfectly in my opinion. (hide spoiler)]CW: death, starvation, isolation, encounters with wild animals, gun violence, harm to animals in wild, body horror (infection wound and descriptions of it), discussion that suggests sexual assault (no explicit details)

This book! So damn good…set aside a day to read it, because once you start it’s next-to-impossible to stop.

there’s a feeling from the start of this novel that it’s building towards something big that never quite manages to materialise but the relative smallness of the narrative allows for a little more complexity in the characters and their relationships (some of them anyway - alas bullfrog we hardly knew ye) than i would typically expect from a shortish wilderness survival novel so i didn’t really mind too much. overall enjoyable!