Title: The Inheritance Games
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Narrator: Christie Moreau
Rating: 5
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Immediately I saw the cover while browsing for audiobooks, I was soooo interested in this book. I looked it up on GR, and when I saw the blurb, I knew I had to read it immediately! CINDERELLA AND KNIVES OUT?! Sign me up! I finished the book I was reading, and flung my monthly TBR out of the window. I was done within 6-7 hours, and I was really glad I picked this up. It was soooo enjoyable and I loved every bit of it!
It had interesting characters, a gripping plot, thrilling events, and a sizzling (if a bit unnecessary and repetitive) love triangle. The main character, Avery, is struggling. She’s a student in an educational system designed to make people like her fail, she’s poor and basically living out of her car and with a sister that loves her but has an abusive boyfriend, and her future is largely unsure. One day, while waiting for a test to be remarked, she’s summoned to the principal’s office. Expecting test results, she’s stunned to see her sister and an unknown young man who’s got some news for her.
Avery’s life is turned upside down (but for the better) after Grayson Hawthorne breaks his news, and she finds herself in Texas, inheriting billions of dollars from a man she’s sure she’s never met. There were so many threads in this book that a less than skillful author would have lost the plot, but the author did a great and commendable job of tying everything together at the end, and even setting the tone for book two’s mystery.
Speaking of mystery, this book was packed full of mysteries, as the Hawthorne grandsons worked with Avery to uncover the reason their grandfather decided to leave his fortune to a stranger. The house Avery also has to live in along with the dispossessed Hawthorne’s is also full of its own mysteries and secret tunnels and passageways. There was also the mystery of Emily, the girl who died, as Avery tried to get to the bottom of her death when no one was being forthcoming with an account of what actually happened. There were some parts of this book where my heart was in my mouth! I was so scared for Avery at some points because the stakes were so high and there were so many threats to her life. I love how everything played out, and the only thing I have a problem with is the love triangle Avery found herself in with two of the Hawthorne brothers and how it seemed to be history repeating itself.
I enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait to read book two. I highly recommend it to mystery/suspense/thriller lovers.
Blurb
Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why–or even who Tobias Hawthorne is. To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s touch–and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes.
Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a con-woman, and he’s determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather’s last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.
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