“No,” Max corrected. “You and I are friends. Grayson is the physical manifestation of your avoidant attachment style. He won’t let himself want you. You don’t want to want to be wanted. Everybody stays at arm’s length. Nobody gets hurt, and nobody gets any.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Hawthorne Legacy
CBR17 Bingo: Play
At the end of The Inheritance Games, one mystery was solved…sort of. Why the game was created was answered, but as to why Avery was named the heir remains unknown.
The game evolves into something new but with roughly the same plot. Who is Avery Grambs and what did she mean to Tobias Hawthorne? In this book, the Hawthorne boys and Avery must go back to move forward. Avery, Max, and Jameson team up to find out what events between the Hawthorne siblings occurred twenty years earlier that caused sisters Skye and Zara to become estranged and for Tobias the second to disown his family. Meanwhile, Xandar joins forces with Rebecca and Thea as he believes that, based on a message his grandfather left for him at the end of the game: part 1, the next piece of the mystery is Xander’s to unravel. Always the youngest and the first to be left out of Grayson and Jameson’s rivalry, Xander vows to solve the latest mystery on his own.
There are several things this series does well. For one, the YA tropes (love triangle, quirky best friend, rich people being predictably awful and transparently villainous) are fun despite following expected formulas. Avery, for better or worse, is both smart and stupid in all of the right ways. She refuses to see what is right in front of her, but she is damn good at sussing out clues and puzzles. Her best friend Max makes an appearance in this book, and the story is better because of it. While I loathe the quirky best friend most of the time, Max elevates the story and makes the nonsensical familial drama feel lighter. Emily (RIP), Rebecca, and Thea’s subplot is pretty boring, and lucky for us the author trimmed it down to serve its purpose without lingering.
Despite being a YA book, this is the soapiest series I’ve read in a long time. There are SO many affairs and secret babies!! And this is only book two! I hope the pattern of secret baby/secret parent dies down in subsequent books because at this point, every person Avery comes in contact with has the potential to be a secret relative or love child. Cashier at Wal-Mart: secret love child of Toby or his sisters? Neighborhood dog walker: estranged cousin? The possibilities (and disappointing reveals) are endless.