Well, my other suggestion involves preemptively whacking the entire Hawthorne family, and I was afraid you’d take that as a euphemism.
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Inheritance Games
CBR17 Bingo: Green
Avery Grambs is no stranger to pain. Orphaned after her mother’s death, and abandoned by her father, Avery is left to raise herself. Other than her older, half-sister Libby, the only one looking out for Avery is Avery. When Libby’s abusive boyfriend moves into their apartment, Avery moves out. Sleeping in her car, working part-time, and sneaking calls to her best friend Max keeps Avery busy when she’s not studying in the hopes of maintaining a decent-enough GPA to quality for whatever scholarships she can get. Despite her “bad” attitude and lack of enthusiasm in class, Avery is smart. So much so that when the principal accuses her of cheating on her physics exam, Avery swallows her anger and agrees to retake the exam just to prove him wrong.
Summoned to the principal’s office the next afternoon, Avery arrives expecting an apology. Instead, she finds her sister and a well-dressed, stern young man who says she must come with him to the reading of his grandfather’s will. His grandfather, the billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, named Avery as one of his heirs and no one has any idea why.
Avery doesn’t trust this man (Greyson Hawthorne) but he threatens to take any means necessary to ruin her life until he gets what he wants.
Avery and Libby are whisked away on a private jet to Hawthorne House: a sprawling, Gothic estate somewhere in Texas. At the reading of the will, it turns out that Avery has a much larger part to play in whatever strange game the late Tobias Hawthorne set for her and for his many entitled, elitist, and overly competitive offspring.
This book was a fun, fast read. It was a perfect palate cleanser that had me using my brain to suss out the clues along with Avery. The personalities of the Hawthorne grandsons are somewhat flat and predictable, but the story made their thin characterizations forgivable. Avery is the typical brilliant but stubborn heroine that infuriates and intrigues at least two of the Hawthorne grandsons. Again, even though the potential love triangle is predictable, I’m not mad about it.
The things that bugged me the most were any references to Texas in a setting that could be Anywhere, USA. Avery and James hunting through the forest all night for clues without any fear of snakes or bugs bothered the hell out of me for some reason, and the comically-drawn, laidback cowboy grandson, Nash, irritated me beyond belief. All I can say is if you’re going to set a story in a very specific location, at least do the bare minimum of research to give it a hint of believability. However, at three hundred and eighty-six pages, perhaps the publisher and the author decided to cut out extra world building in favor of more missions crawling the secret passages snaking throughout the creepy mansion.
My review for the second book in the series, The Hawthorne Legacy, is coming soon.