The Champions is the new sequel to the Cheerleaders

ByJen
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Is there a sequel to The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas? Yes, The Champions is the new sequel to The Cheerleaders. I’ve read it and I am here to tell you everything you need to know about The Champions, everything you need to remember about The Cheerleaders, plus Champion spoilers (in case you’re busy and just want to know how it all comes out.)

Review of The Champions, the sequel to the Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas

Is There a Sequel to The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas?

YES. The sequel to The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas is called The Champions and came out in September 2024.

Do You Need to read The Cheerleaders Before You Read The Champions?

YES, I recommend that you read The Cheerleaders first as The Champions will make more sense.

What If You Read the Cheerleaders and Forgot Everything?

Same, bestie. The Cheerleaders came out in 2018 which was literally a whole lifetime ago. Then I looked up a plot summary and found the most HORRIFIC AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated summary. The character list had errors everywhere. The summary had a lot of words and said NOTHING.

Please support human-generated content. If we accept AI content on the internet, we are going to get made-up, INCORRECT content. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

FAQ: What you need to remember about The Cheerleaders for maximum enjoyment of The Champions

You can download my free guide to everything you need to know about the cheerleaders to read the champions.

Download my FREE guide here!

Here is the brief version:

The Cheerleaders takes place in 2018 but looks back at events in 2013.

The cheerleaders who died in 2013 were: Susan Berry and Juliana Roth (murdered); Bethany Steiger and and Colleen Coughlin (car crash); Jennifer Rayburn (sister of Monica; died by suicide.)

Monica Rayburn was Jennifer’s sister. In The Cheerleaders, she investigated the deaths of five cheerleaders five years ago, including the suicide of her sister. 

Ginny Cordero: is on the cheerleading team.

Ethan McReady was in Jen’s class at school until he was expelled after someone found a list of girls in a notebook and reported him. Monica finds lots of texts Jen sent to him and Jen also called him the morning she died. Ethan was sending letters to the police for years that said, “Connect the dots. Find the truth.”

Tom Carlino is Monica’s stepfather, a police officer who shot a sex offender suspected of the Ruiz and Berry murders. That man he shot was later exonerated.

Mike Mejia was Tom’s partner on the police force.

Brandon Michaelson was Monica’s older colleague at the country club. and a track coach They had an affair, and Monica got pregnant and had an abortion just before the book begins.

what was the ending of the cheerleaders by kara thomas

Monica discovers that Brandon Michaelson was the one who killed Susan and Juliana.

Sadly, Monica accepts that her sister Jen did take her own life.

At the end of the book, Ginny remembers being with her father five years ago when he was driving drunk and killed Bethany and Colleen. She doesn’t rescue him from their wrecked car and he dies when the car sinks into a lake. He is never found.

Review of The Champions: the new sequel to the Cheerleaders

Whew, finally we get to The Champions. Here’s the overview:

The Champion by Kara Thomas is the new sequel to The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas. The Champions is pictured on a tablet on a shelf with other pink and purple books

In The Champions, Kara Thomas does sort of what Karen M. McManus did in her One of Us is Lying series: continue her series with new characters while aging up some of her former characters.

This strategy has pros and cons. In the case of The Champions, it would have been weird to continue a series six years later.

We have a new protagonist: Hadley Daughterty, who is the classic YA New Kid In Town.

Hadley has an academic rivalry with Peter Carlino. If you were paying attention to my debrief on The Cheerleaders above, Peter is Monica and Jennifer’s step-dad. He was ten during The Cheerleaders and is mentioned briefly in the book.

Hadley wants to be a journalist and she and Peter are competing to be editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. When Hadley agrees to write a profile of the championship-winning football team, she suddenly finds herself poking a beehive of secrets.

What I liked about the Champions

It was fun to see how the two books fit together, and fun (but weird) to see Monica all grown up. Hadley was a great main character who was a very different personality than Monica. And I love a good academic rivals plot.

What I Liked Less About the Champions

The Champions felt way less dark than The Cheerleaders. Has YA changed? Also, I was hoping that the secrets would be as original as in the first book, but they were exactly as I predicted.

Spoilers for The Champions: How Does the Cheerleaders duology end?

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  • Both main character Hadley and fellow student Peter Carlino want to be editor-in-chief- of the school paper. Hadley is assigned to write a profile about Sunnybrook High’s winning football team.
  • She interviews some of the players and overhears one of them, Gavin, telling another, Tyler, that he’s going to “f-ck up everything.”
  • A football player named Logan gets poisoned at a party by a drink that Hadley thinks was meant for her.
  • Hadley has also been receiving mysterious emails from “SportsFan” warning her to stay away from the team and the story. SportsFan also tells Hadley about a football team cheating ring.
  • Hadley learns that Jen Rayburn was Peter’s half sister, that his dad used to be a cop, and that his sister Monica (the main character in The Cheerleaders) used to be friends with Ginny Cordero, now a math teacher at school.
  • Hadley overhears Coaches Murray and Burnham fighting about Gavin, and saying he isn’t worth the trouble. The next morning, Gavin is dead.
  • Hadley makes an anonymous survey asking the teachers if they knew anything about cheating. Word spreads that she sent it, and she is bullied at school.
  • She also sees Monica Rayburn with a blond guy named Ethan. Peter tells her that Ethan was had information to solve the 2013 cheerleader killings, but the police ignored him.
  • Peter and Hadley interview Markell, a former football player and friend of Monica’s. He says that at a party two years ago, some players assaulted a girl. Nothing got reported, but Gavin took a video..
  • Peter wonders if the girl they assaulted two years ago is SportsFan.
  • Hadley discusses everything with Tyler, another football player. He tells her that a girl named Chloe was the one assaulted by Gavin and two other players, one of whom is Cameron Burnham, the team’s star player and brother of the coach.
  • Peter, Monica, Hadley and Ginny believe that Cameron is abusive to his girlfriend, Alix. She is Hadley’s neighbor and she gave her boyfriend Cameron an alibi for the night of Gavin’s murder.
  • They also learn Alix knows all about Chloe’s assault. And that Cameron got Tyler to help him destroy evidence after the party where Logan got poisoned.
  • Hadley checks her ring cam for the night of Gavin’s death. Cameron snuck out of Alix’s house the night of Gavin’s murder.
  • Hadley goes to Alix’s house to talk to her, but Cameron shows up. Alix was the one who poisoned Logan. And Cameron borrowed his brother’s car and killed Gavin. Alix shoots Cameron.
  • Chloe was indeed SportsFan. Peter and Hadley are doing a story on her assault. 
  • Ethan and Monica are together! Monica is planning to go to law school.

Please leave any questions in the comments. Spoilers are fine!

Check this book out and if you want more info on the author and all her books, check out my Author Spotlight on Kara Thomas! I also reviewed her latest book on my mystery and thriller website!

Jen has been blogging about books since 2011. In that time, she has read and reviewed over 1500 books. She loves helping readers find their perfect next read and helping books find their audience.

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5 Comments

    1. I think because Gavin knew what the football players did to Chloe. After Gavin got kicked off the football team, he was going to tell everyone what happened.

      Reply

  2. I still don’t understand the bit at the end where Hadley realizes that Markell said Chloe’s SA happened in Brayden’s room, but it actually happened in Cameron’s. Hadley notices that this doesn’t match up and then nothing ever happens with that information. Does anyone know what this means?

    Reply

    1. I looked back at it and all I can guess is that everyone was trying to protect Cameron, because he was the key to the football team winning. And al the girls seem really afraid of Alix.

      Reply

  3. i found it odd that at the end of the cheerleaders, monica’s family seemed okay, but by the champions, it appears that tom and monica’s mom, phoebe, are divorced. peter says “dads house” a few times. was it because of the secrets tom was keeping?

    ALSO, maybe controversial idk, but i was super uncomfortable with the idea of monica and ethan being together. ethan was in love with jen and she ended her life before he got any closure, so them dating was really weird to me. did anyone else think that it wasn’t right?

    Reply