Slay by Brittney Morris

Kiera spends all her time monitoring herself, careful not to be 'too black' in her mostly white school and neighbourhood. At home, though, when she can go online and play the VR game she invented...that's a whole other story. But how long can she keep it safe?




What an amazing story. I can't and won't try to comment on most of the cultural aspects, but the feeling of togetherness, of community, is palpable. The concept of the game is fantastic, too.

I love the characters. Brittney did a brilliant job showing that no one is quite what they seem at first. This is an amazing book that's definitely going to stay with me; I'm really looking forward to selling it.



By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the "downfall of the Black man."

But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for "anti-white discrimination."

Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?