Winner Take All

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Author(s)

Laurie Devore

Publisher

Imprint

Genre(s)

Age Range

16+

Release Date

January 30, 2018

ISBN

9781250082886

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For Nell Becker, life is a competition she needs to win. For Jackson Hart, everyone is a pawn in his own game. They both have everything to lose. Nell wants to succeed at everything—school, sports, life. And victory is sweeter when it means beating Jackson Hart, the rich, privileged, undisputed king of Cedar Woods Prep Academy. Yet no matter how hard she tries, Jackson is somehow one step ahead. They’re a match made in hell, but opposites do attract. Drawn to each other by their rivalry, Nell and Jackson fall into a whirlwind romance that consumes everything in their lives. But when a devastating secret exposes their relationship as just another game, how far will Nell go to win? Visceral and whip-smart, Laurie Devore’s Winner Take All paints an unflinching portrait of obsessive love, toxic competition, and the drive for perfection.

For Nell Becker, life is a competition she needs to win. For Jackson Hart, everyone is a pawn in his own game. They both have everything to lose.

Nell wants to succeed at everything—school, sports, life. And victory is sweeter when it means beating Jackson Hart, the rich, privileged, undisputed king of Cedar Woods Prep Academy. Yet no matter how hard she tries, Jackson is somehow one step ahead. They’re a match made in hell, but opposites do attract.

Drawn to each other by their rivalry, Nell and Jackson fall into a whirlwind romance that consumes everything in their lives. But when a devastating secret exposes their relationship as just another game, how far will Nell go to win?

Visceral and whip-smart, Laurie Devore’s Winner Take All paints an unflinching portrait of obsessive love, toxic competition, and the drive for perfection.

Editor reviews

2 reviews

great Courtney Summers readalike

February 07, 2019 (Updated: July 12, 2026)

Overall rating

4.3

Plot

4.0

Characters

5.0

Writing Style

4.0

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N/A

The phrases “beautiful disaster” and “bad romance” but NOT the well-known novels that use those phrases for their titles. Five different Emilie Autumn songs, “Did You Imagine” by Lumidee, and “I Want My Tears Back” by Nightwish. These are just a few of the things that Winner Take All is associated with in my head because all of those things fit the book’s events at one point or another.

Winner Take All is a hate-to-love novel that happens to go through the cycle a number of times. Hate to love to hate to love to hate to looooove… Six-foot-tall explosion of intensity Nell (talls girls in YA, whoo!) and garbage golden boy Jackson are obsessed with each other as they volley for the number-one spot in their grade and I almost obsessively read their book in the span of a few days. At the same time Nell would like to show him what’s what, she’d also like to make out with him–and Jackson feels the exact same way.

Nell hit me in the heart particularly hard as a character, especially because she had a panic attack over a .001 difference in GPA that puts Jackson in the number-one spot. I too was so obsessed with keeping my grades high in school, particularly in my senior year of high school when I wanted to achieve an all-As school year for the very first time. When a print photography project threatened to ruin my grade, I suffered my first-ever panic attack in the middle of a crowded school hallway. My photography teacher witnessed it and kindly waived the print photography project for me.

So yeah, I get where Nell is coming from to a degree. Even then, Nell’s mom (also her prep school’s headmistress) pushes her much harder to succeed than either of my parents pushed me. And to be frank, they didn’t need to push me much at all because I did well with little effort.

Meanwhile, Jackson has a few secrets while he and Nell are dancing around with one another. He’s got a garbage, serial-cheating dad and his mom is wrecked due to the aforementioned serial cheater, but he’s got some humanity hidden waaaaaaay deep down in there. At times, you can’t tell who’s more serious about their relationship: Nell or Jackson. The strength of Winner Take All comes down to the lit-match-meets-gasoline dynamic these two share and the many, many twists in their mutual story.

That’s not to diss the strong subplot wherein Nell’s best friend Lia is dating a guy whose mom is currently prosecuting Lia’s dad for corruption. Lia is a particularly welcome presence in the novel because she’s usually the one calling Nell on any bull. When Nell reaches her most obsessive, it’s Lia who sets her straight by reminding her that Nell Becker is not the center of the solar system. She’s just as much of a mess as everyone else in the novel, but Lia is my favorite mess.

My one bone to pick is with that ending. For a novel that’s outright described to be about “obsessive love,” it ends on a note that feels anything but satisfying. I felt a shot of dread instead because good GOD these two need to exist a significantly away from one another. At least a full state apart.

It’s true: Laurie Devore’s novels are the readalikes for Courtney Summers fans. Winner Take All is even a step up from How to Break a Boy and I’m excited to read the next book that comes from Devore’s hands. It’ll fulfill your desire for imperfect, messy leading ladies in YA!

Paige Cee Top 50 Reviewer 105 reviews

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Train wreck from start to finish

April 21, 2026 (Updated: July 12, 2026)

Overall rating

2.0

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2.0

Characters

2.0

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This book was honestly a train wreck from start to finish.

I was intrigued by this book because the cover was pretty and the synopsis sounded good. Hate-to-love romance? Sign me up! And I read a little bit of the book before I bought it and it seemed good. Unfortunately, that’s where the good parts about this book ended.

This was not a hate-to-love romance. This was a hate-to-weird romance. The romance was just so bizarre because the main character and the love interest were honestly just terrible people. They also couldn’t communicate like normal people so their relationship was incredibly dysfunctional.

I also just disliked them both so much as people that rooting for them as a couple was hard to do. They were both awful and there was nothing really redeeming about either one of them. The main character was such a terrible friend that I couldn’t stand her in that respect. And her and the love interest were both just so manipulative. They were honestly just some of the worst people I’ve ever read about.

I also hated the mom in this book. She was just the absolute worst. She gave her daughter such a complex about being a perfect person and put such high expectations on her; meanwhile, she’s a terrible person herself and is the farthest thing from perfect. It was just abominable and it was never really dealt with. It was basically just one fight scene and then everything was forgiven.

The writing was also really weird. It was very choppy and kind of messy. There were no transitions between scenes and there was a lot of just plopping of information about characters in a way that just felt really disjointed and weird. The author would also just expect the reader to figure certain things out that were going on. For instance, the main character plays volleyball, but instead of being like “the next day, at volleyball practice...” she just explained what the character was doing during practice and left the reader to figure out that she was playing volleyball based on that alone. I figured it out, but it would have been nice if she made it clearer that that’s what she was doing instead of just expecting the reader to get that with no prior information that the character even played volleyball.

The other thing that really bothered me was that the main character had serious anxiety problems, but nothing was ever done about it. She would have panic attacks and was basically super high strung all the time but she never actually did anything to get help for it. And I know not everyone seeks help for mental health issues, but in a book that teens will be reading and who might be struggling with the same issues, it would’ve been nice if the author had said something in the story about seeking help for that kind of thing. She mentioned something in an author’s note, but not everyone reads those and I think it’s important to address it in the story itself because that’s what people focus on. The main character had such unhealthy coping mechanisms and I worry that a teenager who reads this who deals with anxiety like the main character might not seek the help they need to get better because the main character never does. Even if she had just talked to a friend or a teacher or a parent about her problems instead of a therapist, that would’ve been better than just not having her get any help at all. I think that was a major oversight and it bothered me a lot.

Oh, also, there was this whole thing that the author was trying to say about how boys and girls are held to different standards in society. But a) we already knew that, so it was kind of pointless to make that statement here and b) it got so lost in the mess of this book that it lost all meaning.

Overall, this book was a hot mess from start to finish and I would not recommend it to anyone.