57 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer Lynn BarnesGames Untold
Jennifer Lynn BarnesFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Complexity of Family Dynamics
The novellas and stories collected in Games Untold feature intimate scenes between the Hawthornes and their loved ones that, together, illustrate how the characters move beyond conventional definitions of family to shape their own complex, atypical family structures. The four Hawthorne boys—Jameson, Nash, Grayson, and Xander—were raised by their billionaire grandfather Tobias. Although he gave the boys a decadent, privileged life, his real legacy isn’t his fortune, but “the marks he’[s] left on each of his grandsons. Invisible. Enduring” (16). Throughout the collection, the Hawthorne grandsons endeavor to move beyond their fraught upbringing with Tobias and to create a new family dynamic.
Over the course of the collection, the Hawthornes reshape their relationship and family dynamic through shared experiences. Several of the collection’s stories feature scenes of the boys engaging in playful puzzles, games, and scavenger hunts, illustrating their enduring bond. With these activities, Jameson, Nash, Grayson, and Xander reinvent their grandfather’s love for puzzles, turning it into a connective bonding activity. Jennifer Lynn Barnes uses the boys’ games and antics to show how even the most complex family dynamics have positive outcomes—in the context of the Hawthorne family, this redemptive result is the Hawthorne brothers’ loving relationship.
Barnes also uses the character arcs of Hannah, Avery, and Libby to illustrate this reimagining of the family. Each of these characters is connected to the Hawthornes but has her own familial background. For a character like Hannah, getting “out of the house—and out of the family” who raised her is her primary object (95). Her parents’ drug and gun trade incites Hannah’s fraught relationships with her parents and complicated relationship with her sister. However, when she falls in love with Toby, gives birth to her daughter Avery, and later unofficially adopts Libby, she creates a new family structure. Finding “[t]he love of [her] life” gives Hannah her daughter Avery and also gives her the courage to invent a new, loving family dynamic for Avery and Libby (277). Years later, Avery and Libby become a part of the Hawthorne family too when they fall in love with Jameson and Nash. In turn, the Hawthorne boys welcome their new partners into their family and incorporate them into their fraternal rituals, again broadening the idea of family and further developing the dynamic of the Hawthornes.
With its exploration of the development of these two different families and the ways that they intersect, the collection suggests that while all families have difficulties, they also have redeeming qualities. In the end, Jameson, Xander, Grayson, Nash, Avery, and Libby invent a new family unit that moves beyond their parents’ mistakes and puts a priority on love, devotion, care, and joy.
Impact of Wealth and Legacy on Identity
The stories in Games Untold highlight the finances and privilege of the Hawthorne boys and their partners to explore the potential impact of wealth and legacy on the individual’s identity. Because most of the characters are either in their late teens or early twenties, they are still coming of age. Their wealth and comfort affect how they see themselves in the context of their social spheres and beyond, as they seek out and develop their identities.
With Avery’s story, Barnes highlights the impact of wealth on identity by offering an outsider’s perspective on privilege. In “That Night in Prague,” Avery feels uncomfortable after she becomes the youngest billionaire in history because she hasn’t come from a privileged background. She is convinced that she’ll “never get used to this” lifestyle because she hasn’t grown up with wealth as the Hawthorne boys have (7). At the same time, Avery’s unfamiliarity with her new wealth and her perspective as a relative outsider compel her to act charitably. She donates a large sum of her money to a charitable foundation and establishes one of her own. These generous acts capture Avery’s uninterest in letting the Hawthorne legacy and her new riches limit who she is. However, Avery is also interested in enjoying her life. Because she’s “not Cinderella anymore,” she feels that she can finally start “writing [her] own story” and explore the world and herself on her own terms (8). Avery’s experience implies that money can breed generosity, goodness, and autonomy, rather than stereotypical selfishness and greed. With Avery’s story, Barnes also suggests that wealth and legacy can empower and liberate a person, freeing them to develop their own identity.
By contrast, the Hawthorne boys’ wealth and legacy threaten their independent identities and challenge them to reinvent themselves outside the context of their grandfather Tobias. Because of the pain they endured at Tobias’s hands, the boys tend to want everything and to need something—an “elusive something [that can] never be ordinary” (16). This is why the Hawthornes stage such extravagant trips, adventures, and games. Their raucous rituals are a way to claim their individuality and freedom beyond their family, shaping their identities in new ways.
Barnes even delves backward into family history to explore this idea, highlighting the effects of wealth and legacy on identity through Hannah and Tobias’s storyline. Their love affair transcends their class differences and Tobias’s wealth and legacy because it develops in isolation. The images of the couple on Rockaway Watch illustrate how their romance allows them to define themselves outside the Rooney and Hawthorne names. With their example, as well as that of the Hawthorne boys and Avery, the collection highlights the impact of privilege and class on their journeys of self-discovery as well as exploring how the characters transcend that impact.
Finding and Accepting Love
In Games Untold, Barnes explores how finding and accepting love can liberate and empower the individual. Throughout the collection, structure and narrative focus are used to highlight these connections through the romances of Hannah and Toby, Avery and Jameson, and Libby and Nash. These romantic storylines feature in “That Night in Prague,” “The Same Backward as Forward,” and “The Cowboy and the Goth,” novellas that use formal and structural techniques to underscore the complexities of the characters’ relationships.
Throughout these novellas, Barnes uses temporal shifts to juxtapose the characters’ past and present lives to highlight and explore the characters’ emotions. In “The Same Backward as Forward,” the narrative pairs scenes of Hannah and Toby at Rockaway Watch shack with scenes of Hannah alone in her small apartment; this juxtaposition captures the contrast between Hannah’s emotional experience when she’s with Toby versus when she’s by herself. In “That Night in Prague,” temporal shifts capture how Avery and Jameson’s relationship has evolved and endured over time as the narrative toggles between the past and present. In “The Cowboy and the Goth,” Barnes uses a narrative frame to show this contrast in Libby and Nash’s relationship. The novella is bookended by scenes set in the present, labeled “Now,” while the heart of the story depicts scenes from Libby and Nash’s relationship in the months before. This formal choice places their current relationship in the context of Libby’s gradual acceptance of her love for Nash and Nash’s love for her.
These overlaps between the past and the present in Hannah and Toby’s, Avery and Jameson’s, and Libby and Nash’s romances offer an in-depth examination of how love can transform the individual. In each of these romantic tales, the characters’ love for each other remakes them. For Hannah, “let[ting] someone see [her]” and “let[ting] [her]self imagine what it would be like not to be alone” opens her heart and deepens her relationship with Toby (234). Her relationship with Toby—who she refers to as Harry at their relationship’s start—also helps her to heal from her grief over Kaylie’s death and to see herself apart from her family. Avery’s and Libby’s romances similarly take them by surprise and offer them unique opportunities to see themselves anew. Though the sisters are initially reluctant to get involved with Jameson and Nash, over time they realize that their new partners see, understand, and value them. Barnes highlights the present state of their relationships by exploring their development, emphasizing the characters’ transformation over time. These three romantic dynamics convey the collection’s overarching thematic claim that “Anything is possible when you love someone with no regrets” (228). Once Hannah, Avery, and Libby acknowledge, accept, and embrace their feelings for their romantic partners, they can experience love’s transformative powers.
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