Parents' Guide to Darkly

The DARKLY games are handcrafted, and filled with secrets, hidden mysteries, ghosts, murderous fiends, and goblins. Created by visionary designer Louisiana Veda, who died by suicide at age 36, the games are now worth millions. When Arcadia "Dia" Gannon learns that the Louisiana Veda Foundation is taking applications for a summer internship ... she hesitates. More than 400,000 teens have already applied. How can someone who lives in a small Ohio town, has a 2.7 GPA, and has a crush that's going nowhere on the handsome and wealthy Choke Newington ever compete against those odds? Dia is stunned when she's accepted. She decides to put aside her fears, seize her destiny, and fly to London. On the flight she meets Poe Valois, a fellow intern who's a billionaire's son from France. But it's not London where Dia and the six other interns (now known as the Veda Seven) will be living. It's the abandoned and spooky island where Veda had her factory. When they arrive on the island, they're told the real reason they've been brought to England: Forty years ago, Valkyrie, the unreleased crown jewel of Veda's games, was stolen, never to be heard of again. But several months ago, the administrators of her estate discovered that teenagers had begun playing it. The first winner of the game, 15-year-old George Grenfell, has now gone missing, and whichever of the seven can find George and discover who's behind the game will win a reward of a million pounds. As the search for George begins, the teens find themselves invited to play Valkyrie, a terrifying game that Poe describes as "an inaccessible mosh pit of animal fight or flight." Choke mysteriously appears in London, and the seven discover a long-buried secret about Veda that will change one of their lives forever.