Winning Streak: Tales and Trivia of the 40 Most Popular Board Games by John-Michael Gariepy ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

I grew up playing board and card games so I thought this might be a fun walk down memory lane and perhaps I would learn some cool facts.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

February 2022; Indie; ebook (274 pages)
nonfiction

If you love trivia or looking for a book to read in the bathroom then this is a great book. The short chapters that stand alone are great for a quick read between tasks. I've actually have been reading this off and on for a couple of months.

There is a good deal of fun trivia, particularly in the last half or so of the book. Some of the trivia is board game adjacent. Like in the chapter about Clue, we get a lot of details about the movie. Likewise, the chapter about Monopoly focuses on the game show - did you know there was a game show based on Monopoly?

I felt like the book was a bit disorganized. It starts off this talking about games on a best of type list where users up and down vote the games. The early chapters focused a good deal on why they were on the list and whether or not the author felt it deserved its spot. Somewhere around the one-third mark, the list played less importance and we get more trivia (which is about when I started reading it more steadily). It appears that these chapters had been previously published articles that the author collated into the book. Having done this myself with my blog tours book, I know the importance of editing the articles to make sure the chapters flow together as a single entity. Unfortunately, it didn't feel like the author did this. There are some parenthetical updates to a few of the articles so at least he did freshen them up a bit.

I recognized some of the games - like Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, Risk, Apple 2 Apples, Scrabble, etc. (even if I hadn't played them). But there were plenty of games that I hadn't heard of. Quite a bit of time was spent on Settlers of Catan including the author's own imagined deck of playing cards.

Towards the end of the book, we take another turn and there's a section on using house rules and the chapter on Chess delves into religion (briefly) and determinism versus free will (a bit more).

If you, or someone you know, is a board game enthusiast then this book is a fun read and would be a great gift. 

Buy Winning Streak at Amazon

(Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read the ebook for FREE)

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us. Get even more book news in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter today! Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.