Winners & Liars – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Games, greed and family secrets.
YA book title: Winners & Liars.
YA author: Aleema Omotoni.
Genre: Young Adult/Thriller/Mystery.
Published by: Scholastic.
ISBN: 9780702314940.
Recommended for children aged: 13+.
First published: Paperback June 2026.
This YA book is ideal for teens aged 13+ who love twisty, competition-driven mysteries with real stakes, historical secrets, and a dash of romance alongside the whodunit thrills. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy Young Adult fiction that mixes puzzle-box plotting with thoughtful social commentary. Suitable for fans of Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is Lying, Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Inheritance Games or Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades.
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Our review:
Winners & Liars follows Derin, a working-class Cambridge hopeful whose acceptance should mark the end of a triumphant year with her inseparable prep group, the Kenfield Set. Instead, what was meant to be a celebratory summer ball at Professor Darnley’s historic estate turns into a will reading, following the sudden deaths of the professor and his novelist wife, Cornelia. In a shocking twist, the Darnleys’ own aristocratic children are disinherited, and the students are offered an extraordinary opportunity: compete in a series of games, inspired by Cornelia’s bestselling novel, to become the new heir to the Kenfield estate and its multimillion-pound fortune. For Derin, winning could mean transforming her family’s future, but the disinherited Darnleys have no intention of losing their home without a fight, and a mysterious note slipped under her door hints that the family’s history holds far darker secrets than anyone suspects.
The competition itself is styled after Cornelia’s novel about Black Victorian elites, complete with period costumes, complex parlour games and secret passageways hidden throughout the estate. As the games ramp up, so does the tension. With the Darnley family desperate to hold on to their fortune, Derin can’t be sure who to trust as her classmates, scheming relatives and even the estate itself start to feel unpredictable. In the end, Winners & Liars is less about who wins the inheritance and more about what winning actually costs.
Our verdict:
Winners & Liars blends genres in a way that feels fun and fresh: part Harry Potter-style tournament with clever, high-stakes games, part slow-burn mystery, part meditation on how history remembers, or erases, Black lives. Derin’s story never loses sight of what matters most: the friendships she’s fighting to protect, a clean and sweet romance that develops alongside the chaos, and her own determination to uncover the truth about the people who shaped her. Add in a family more than willing to scheme its way back into a fortune, and you’ve got a book that keeps you guessing right up until the final round.
- Scholastic’s Winners & Liars page includes a See inside preview.
Many thanks to Scholastic for the review copy.
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