Samantha and Jaysen meet when Jaysen grabs the ticket to a game design workshop that Sam is desperate to attend. To decide who gets to keep the ticket , Sam and Jay agree to a competition of player versus player video games. Because of the tight-knit Australian-Malaysian community they belong to, the competition takes place in neutral spaces where no one is likely to know them.
Sam has just finished year 12 and is determined to become an indie game developer. She’s been working on her game, Vinculum, (is it just me or is that the coolest name ever?) perfecting it in preparation for a showcase. She’s made many sacrifices for the sake of her future dreams. She’s even prepared to throw away her scholarship to university, as soon as she’s worked out how to tell her very proud parents.
But the competition with Jay doesn’t go the way Sam plans, partly because there is more to Jay than Sam first realises. Soon Sam is rethinking everything, including her game developer dreams, her status as the ‘good daughter’, and what it means to be independent.
It took a little while for me to connect to this YA, being set in a world I didn’t know a lot about. However, the humour and repartee between Sam and Jay quickly drew me in, and then I couldn’t put the book down. There were many twists and turns, leading the story to unexpected places. The descriptions of games, puzzles and escape rooms, the Vinculum metaphor, the dynamics of sibling relationships and family expectations, and themes about working out one’s identity at the cusp of adulthood… everything combined to create a moving and thoroughly satisfying read.
In case you’re wondering: Vinculum: a bond or union. AKA the bar between numerator and denominator in a fraction which binds them together.
Anna Quinlan - Author 