Lauren Smyth’s debut Warsafe combines intrigue-filled action with hard questions and two fully rendered heroines.
Lorehaven review, 2025

Warsafe

Worlds collide as Roscoe teams up with Halley to uncover the island’s secret and expose Warsafe’s designs. But some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Play. Win. Survive.

There’s one building on her island that Halley has never visited: the Mercenary House. Perched atop a mountain, surrounded by unnaturally evergreen foliage, the House is rumored to be a breeding ground for criminals. Mercenaries are liars, cheats, spies . . . and maybe, depending on who you ask, killers.

At the Warsafe headquarters in Seattle, Roscoe is beta testing the company’s new video game. It’s her job to track down glitches—but something is different about this one. Lurking behind the lines of malfunctioning code is a secret that threatens to drag her deeper into the game, forcing her to put her life on the line if she ever wants to come home.

Worlds collide as Roscoe teams up with Halley to uncover the island’s secret and expose Warsafe’s designs. But some mysteries are better left unsolved. As traitor after so-called traitor is revealed to be on their side, they begin to wonder: Could Warsafe’s mission be critical enough to justify its cruelty?

Review of Warsafe

· July 2025

Urban explorer Halley and video game-tester Roscoe are both enjoying their normal-sounding jobs. However, recent events threaten to crash their comfortable lives. Halley is intrigued by the one abandoned building on her futuristic island that she has never entered, and Roscoe is confronted with a realistic glitch in her game. In search of answers, they’ll soon cross their playable areas and encounter more frightening battles in the real world. Lauren Smyth’s debut Warsafe combines intrigue-filled action with hard questions and two fully rendered heroines. Stakes rise and worlds clash, leading to reader satisfaction with this standalone contemporary sci-fi.

Best for: Teens and young adults who love dystopian sci-fi stories and video games.

Discern: Mild violence and potentially gross medical problem depictions.

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