Glorious Rivals summary - Read a full recap

Read a Glorious Rivals summary with spoilers, book #2 in Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Grandest Game series. If you are wondering what happened in Glorious Rivals, then you are in the right place!

Special thanks to Erica for providing this Glorious Rivals summary! Check her out on Instagram at @itsneverthelastchapter or on her book blog or her personal blog.

Author
Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Ratings
4.1 stars on Amazon
4.07 stars on Goodreads
Add Glorious Rivals at Goodreads.

The Grandest Game series
#1 The Grandest Game (recap)
#2 Glorious Rivals summary (this page)
#3 The Gilded Blade (synopsis)

***** Everything below is a SPOILER *****

What happened in Glorious Rivals?

Your Glorious Rivals summary:

The players proceeding to phase 2 are Lyra, Grayson, Brady, Rohan, and Savannah.

Lyra carries the trauma of her biological father kidnapping her from preschool before committing suicide. She’s determined to find out how “a Hawthorne did this”, his last words, relate to her father’s death and to win the prize money to save Mile’s End, her home. Whoever wins the game gets 26 million dollars.

Grayson Hawthorne is attracted to Lyra, and it’s clear to everyone. The other players know he’ll protect her and let her win if he has to. His brothers, Nash and Jameson, warn him to stay away from her because she might be a threat. Grayson tells Nash that someone sponsored Lyra’s ticket to the game and she might not be the only one sent here.

There’s a threat on the island who is leaving cryptic notes for her about her father. Nash tells Grayson to ensure Lyra is not like Eve, their uncle – Toby Hawthorne’s biological daughter.

Everyone has collected clues from the first game that will be useful in Phase 2. They include a sword (each team has one), Lyra has Odette’s opera glasses, and Savannah has a chain she wears on her waist and her twin sister’s marker.

Phase 2 is about the fastest. Each clue leads to the next, and teams have to make a digital entry on a tablet. It begins with a dart and engraved glasses as clues. Grayson and Lyra crack the puzzle leading to the helipad. Savannah and Rohan beat them. Lyra and Grayson solve it next and find a calla lily flower while leaving with the next clue. Lyra wonders if the game makers are toying with her or if there’s someone else on the island. Grayson suspects Brady Daniels, as he was close behind. But he reveals that he’s here for Calla Thorp.

The next clue leads them to a clock in the house. In the clock, they find a music box with notes of a waltz and a tango, and a marble flower that looks like a calla lily. It was the same song from Phase 1 – Clair de lune.

In Phase 1, Odette drew a calla lily after Lyra remembered an omega symbol and heard her say, “A Hawthorne did this.” Grayson assures her that neither his family nor Avery knows about what the calla lily means to her. Lyra removes the velvet cover from the box, revealing an infinity or an eight. They climb onto the boathouse to figure out the clue. She spots something in the forest, so Grayson goes to check it. In the meantime, Eve makes an appearance. She tells Lyra to break Grayson’s heart; in return, she will give her money and information from confidential files and a billionaire’s List of enemies that Tobias Hawthorne made. Lyra considers the offer.

Jameson tells Rohan that Lyra is a threat and to do something about it. Rohan agrees if Jameson helps him in return.

He and Savannah search Brady’s room. Rohan finds another photograph of Calla Thorp with a bow – the same picture but newer than the one he had stolen from Brady at the beginning of the game. Savannah holds the worn-out photograph against the fire, and a message appears: Do exactly as I say. The next one said, The game must go on. Ensure that it does.

Gigi was deemed to have run away with a boat after Phase 1. In reality, she was held captive by a man named Slate, working for Eve. After he kidnaps her, a man named Jackson comes to her rescue and agrees to take her back to the island by boat. He lets her stay in his shack until the next day. When she wakes up, he is nowhere to be found. She finds his boat. On the boat, she meets Slate again – who reveals his full name to be Mattias Slater. A third person knocks them out. When they wake, she comes face to face with Eve. They’re all bound. A person in red appears and reveals that she’s using Gigi as bait. Their captor reveals herself to be Zella, Rohan’s competition to own The Devil’s Mercy. Zella says she needs the Grandest Game to go on, and Eve’s interference threatened that, so she had to kidnap her too. Zella was Brady’s sponsor.

At midnight, the players are taken to a yacht in the middle of the ocean. Lyra tells Grayson about Eve. Grayson gathers up his family and relays the same information. He asks about Alice. Jameson stresses letting it go. When Grayson doesn’t, Jameson tells the truth about how he was kidnapped in Prague after following a map their grandfather left. His memories are blurred, but he remembers having tea with Alice, who called him “dear boy” and made it clear that she had to stay dead. After the incident, he told Avery, but they never looked for answers or her again. They think Alice could be the one who sponsored Brady based on his reaction to the calla lily they had found on the helipad. But Avery sent Brady a ticket, unless Alice got to him way before she had. They can’t understand why their grandmother would care about the grandest game now. Avery is against calling off the game. Nash takes off to check on his wife, Libby, and his kids.

On the deck, Savannah and Rohan find dozens of champagne bottles, a hot tub, and a pool. Rohan picks a bottle with a blank label. After dunking it in the hot tub, the label reveals an infinity symbol. The symbol is the same as the one on the dress Avery wore when they arrived and on their room keys. He spots luminescent letters on the champagne flute Savannah had brought from the island. The letters spelled night. They agree to trick Brady into slowing down while Rohan figures out the clue. Brady tells Savannah that his sponsor knows where her father’s body is buried and has proof of what really happened to him. All she had to do was eliminate Rohan from the game. Rohan overhears the conversation and anticipates Savannah’s betrayal. But it never comes.

Grayson informs Alisa Ortega about Eve and asks about Gigi. She tells him she hired Knox Landery, a player from Phase 1, to look for her. Rohan and Lyra figure out that infinity is not a symbol but a mask. On the mask, they find words inscribed – time signatures.

A helicopter arrives to take the players back to the island. This time, it’ll only be clue after clue to the end. The man flying the helicopter is Toby Hawthorne, now Tony Blake. Toby loved Avery like a daughter because he loved her mother, Hannah. Eve was Toby’s real daughter, but she was envious of Avery. They were so focused on Alice that they missed that Eve had sponsored Savannah to ruin Avery when she wins, revealing her as a killer on a livestream. Toby directs Grayson to tell Savannah that it was he who killed her father, Sheffield Grayson, even though he didn’t; neither had Avery. Toby had permitted Avery to host the game on the island to give people this lifetime experience. He had protected Hannah and Avery from Tobias Hawthorne. Kaylie, Hannah’s sister, had died in the fire he had caused.

Rohan and Savannah make it to the mansion and to the door with a dial. The three tunes are numbers: 34, 34, 98. They enter a marble door, and a 5-minute timer begins. Brady had solved the puzzle first. They each take a pouch and a charm. In the pouch, they find a compass with an inscription inside.

Grayson tries to keep Lyra focused on the game, instead of Alice, for her safety. Grayson and Lyra find another hint on the wall that the others missed. The clue is an idiom.

Rohan and Savannah crack it, they kiss. The clue points towards the burned forest. They catch up with Lyra and Grayson. Grayson tries to reason with Savannah that Eve is lying to her, but she ignores him.

Grayson tells Lyra and then Savannah about how their father, Sheffield Grayson, had planted a bomb on a jet that put Avery in a coma after losing someone in the Hawthorne Island fire years ago. He held Toby (Tony) responsible and believed Avery was his daughter. When the bomb didn’t kill her, he held her hostage and threatened to shoot her in front of Toby (Tony) in revenge for their cousin Colin’s death. But Savannah is angry that the Hawthornes let her mother believe that Sheffield was living a tax-evading life in the Maldives.

Meanwhile, Rohan and Lyra find the next clue near a tree. They unearth a plaque with another riddle. Lyra and Grayson miss a gap under the plaque where the dart they received initially would fit. Rohan runs back to his room to retrieve the dart. He finds Brady in his room with his dart. Rohan pickpockets another photograph of Calla Thorp from his pocket. The message reads – one of three. It’s time. He returns to Savannah, who uses her dart, then asks her to follow him to the ruins. There, he breaks their alliance.

Another woman in red appears after Zella, demanding information. Eve tells her what Lyra said about calla lilies, omega and Alice Hawthorne.

Gigi recognizes the lady as Calla Thorp. Calla tells her she is born by design; Calla is no more, and she refers to herself as The Watcher.

Zella returns to find out what The Watcher told them. She and Calla were sisters. Zella lets them go, with a clue for Gigi to go to a bar in town where someone working with the Hawthornes would help her.

Lyra and Grayson crack the clue – it was the first letters of each sentence that formed a code – ONLY AT NIGHT. Lyra and Grayson share a bed. In her sleep, she remembers her father’s suicide and a fresh memory – a woman in all black who makes her drink something. When she tells Grayson this, he connects it to Jameson’s encounter with Alice. Maybe the liquid she made them drink also made them forget. Grayson’s watch blinks, but he refuses to show it to Lyra. She realizes he’s been trying to manipulate her. On his watch, he receives a message from his brothers – O.M. Located, which meant Alisa found Odette. Lyra realizes that she is not a threat; Alice is. Lyra is a liability because she knows Alice is alive. That also made Odette a liability because she had told Grayson and Lyra about Alice in Phase 1. Lyra proceeds by herself to figure out the clue.

Rohan returns to the tree and the plaque. He pushes Brady enough, threatening to reveal he’s been corresponding with his sponsor, thereby breaking the rules. They fight, and Rohan leaves him unconscious. He takes away his and Brady’s dart. He spots a spiral tattoo on the inside of his arm. The tattoo spelt – Rohan must lose. It was not a temporary tattoo. It seemed like he had a sponsor even before he was picked by Avery. That meant the sponsor knew Rohan would be playing. The person who stood to gain from his loss was Zella, the Duchess, fighting to inherit the Devil’s Mercy.

He inserts the dart; this time, the plaque rotates. He retrieves his charm and signs the ledger. A spotlight lights up the sky with the words LIE. It doesn’t disappear when he returns the ledger. The clue leads the players to the docks, as that’s the shape of the word LIE read backwards. The next clue is on the underside of the dock. Savannah gives Rohan the photographs with messages left for Brady – her leverage. She also offers to give him the money he needs to own Devil’s Mercy. Savannah kisses Rohan this time, then leaves.

Lyra agrees to play with Grayson, but he has to be honest with her. They see thousands of calla lilies floating towards the shore. A warning.

The second-to-last puzzle leads the players to the library. There, a hidden door opens, and a toll is required to pass to the next level. The charms the players collected throughout the game unlock another door. Savannah is the first to solve it and reach the final puzzle. Rohan follows, then Lyra and Grayson.

How did Glorious Rivals end?

LFor the final puzzle, they have to submit four dice, but only one player from each pair can do so, automatically making one person the winner. Rohan surrenders to Savannah. She wins. But when the screen appears to congratulate the winner, there are only empty chairs. No Hawthornes. Grayson immediately knows something is wrong.

An announcement requests that they all gather on the helipad for extraction. The security informs them that Avery is AWOL. The players, except Brady, are taken to the yacht. Security heads back to look for him.

Jameson is furious with Lyra and blames her. They find a note left by Avery that says not to look for her and that the press cannot find out about this.

With Knox’s help, Gigi gets in touch with Alisa. She relates all events about her kidnapping and the woman in the red coat to Jameson, Grayson and Lyra. Jameson offers to pay Rohan anything to find Avery. He believes Zella knows something, based on what Gigi told him.

Jameson leaves for Prague. Alisa tasks Knox with finding Brady, who vanished from the island.

Gigi reunites with Savannah and apologizes for keeping the truth about their father a secret. Savannah feels bad about Avery being kidnapped. Rohan approaches them with a job for Gigi.

Grayson and Lyra meet with Odette at a hotel to gather information. She tells them about the Watcher, Hand, and Judge – Lily, Omega, Monoceros. Exclusively three women who answer to no one but themselves, but many answer to them. Odette reveals she had received a calla lily long ago – a warning. And if they’ve received hundreds, that means something very big is about to happen.

Avery wakes up in a white room with no doors or windows but a very complicated maze on the wall.

There you go! That’s what happened in Glorious Rivals. We hope you enjoyed this Glorious Rivals summary with spoilers.

Special thanks to Erica for providing this Glorious Rivals summary! Check her out on Instagram at @itsneverthelastchapter or on her book blog or her personal blog.

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