Michele Leathers’s They All Had a Chance Brings a Camp Contest and a Familiar Grifter

In They All Had a Chance (They All Had a Reason #4) by Michele Leathers, a summer counselor job comes with an unusually high-stakes prize: the winning counselor gets the camp. For Jane, who needs money and has little confidence in herself, the summer offers a chance to earn a living. For Athena, the competition is an opening to pursue a plan of her own. The setup puts Jane’s coming-of-age predicament alongside the calculating return of Bellany, a character with a history of trying to get what she wants through deception.

A summer job with a bigger prize

Jane is 18 and facing the prospect of leaving her aunt and uncle’s home now that she is an adult. She has one last summer to work as a counselor on Catalina Island and put money aside. The book’s reviewer describes her as neither especially bright nor skilled nor attractive, and says Jane is surprised when her beautiful roommate Athena takes her under her wing. Athena offers to help Jane improve her appearance, but that friendliness sits within a more complicated situation: Athena is actually Bellany, using a new name, and has set her sights on Shandy, the camp’s owner.

Shandy’s counselor contest gives the story its central engine. The winner will take ownership of the camp, making the competition more consequential than a seasonal workplace rivalry. Bellany sees a way to use the contest to her advantage, and the reviewer says she has ideas for getting rid of fellow counselors after they have helped her win. That premise creates room for suspicion among the staff: the counselors are competing for a prize while one of them may be treating the rest as tools.

Leathers’s setup also creates a sharp difference between Jane and Bellany. Jane begins the summer needing practical help and unsure of her own worth; Bellany arrives with a concealed identity and a clear appetite for control. Their paths meet through Athena’s apparent mentorship, which gives readers reason to question what Jane is being offered and what Bellany expects to gain. The account does not disclose how the contest ends, so the central draw is the tension between the camp’s public challenge and Bellany’s private intentions.

A reviewer’s reservations about the series

The review, by Cindy, a middle school librarian with an MLS, is plainly skeptical of the book’s returning antagonist. Cindy calls Bellany an ineffective grifter despite her willingness to kill for what she wants, and finds her characterization flat even after four books. In Cindy’s view, that repetition raises a larger question about how much more the series can do with the character. Readers who have followed Bellany may be more interested in seeing whether her familiar methods lead somewhere new; newcomers may want to know that this is the fourth installment in They All Had a Reason.

Cindy also recommends that students looking for a book with a similar broad appeal try The Inheritance Games instead. That is a personal recommendation from the reviewer, not a universal measure of which book readers will prefer. It does, however, make her position clear: the camp contest and hidden identity may catch a reader’s interest, but Bellany’s repeated presence does not persuade her that this installment develops the series enough.

Who may want to pick it up

The book may suit readers drawn to a summer camp setting, a contest with an unusually large reward, and a heroine who has to navigate uncertain motives while trying to secure her independence. It may also appeal to readers already invested in Bellany’s story and curious about her latest attempt to gain control. Those who want a standalone read, or who need a central character to change substantially from one installment to the next, may share Cindy’s reservations. The review’s lukewarm assessment is especially relevant for students deciding whether to start a series at its fourth book.

They All Had a Chance runs 272 pages and is listed at $13 in paperback. The source rates its language G, noting zero swears and zero uses of the “f” word; mature content PG, with beer mentioned and brief kisses; and violence PG, with deaths mentioned and mild danger. Its buying advisory is “HS - OPTIONAL,” and its appeal rating is “SOME.” Those ratings point to a relatively mild content profile, while the premise still includes danger and characters willing to harm others to get what they want.

For readers weighing the book, the most useful question may be whether Bellany’s continuing schemes are enough to make another installment worthwhile. The contest gives this volume a distinct summer setting and a concrete prize, while Jane’s need for money grounds the story in a more personal concern. Cindy’s critique suggests that the series’ next step will depend on whether Bellany’s familiar tactics can reveal something new about her—or about the people caught in her plans.