Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: September 1, 2020
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult / Thrillers & Suspense
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 conwoman, 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.
The Inheritance Games is the first installment in author Jennifer Lynn
Barnes The Inheritance Games series. This book has been compared to Knives
Out, and One of Us is Lying. High School Junior Avery Grambs is a
really good student who wants to attend the University of Connecticut upon graduation,
if she can get enough scholarships. Avery has been living with her half-sister
Libby since her mom died. But, after an argument with her sister’s boyfriend,
Avery finds herself living in her car. Then the unexpected happens.
Avery is called to the principal's office where she
receives the shock of her life. Thanks to her sister’s idiocy of tossing away
mail, Avery discovers that she has been named in the will of a recently
deceased Texas billionaire and philanthropist Tobias Hawthorne. She has no idea
who the man is, or why he would have left anything to her, but she has no
choice. Avery is flown to Texas where the reading of the will take place by
Tobias's lawyers. Avery discovers that Tobias left much of his money to her. But
there is a catch. She must move into Hawthorne manor and stay there an entire
year or lose everything.
She must share a home with Tobias's four grandsons;
Grayson, Alexander, Jameson, and Nash who have no idea where this interloper
came from. Could she be Cinderella or is she Marie Antoinette? She must deal
with the angry Hawthorne women who are willing to be cutthroat if it means
getting rid of Avery for good. She must figure out why any of this happened to
her by playing a mysterious game while trying to survive the Hawthorne family
who have all been disinherited. If she can survive for a year living with the
boys, she will inherit a fortune. If she doesn't, things get really twisted as
to whom will get the money.
Avery is not only likable, but someone you want to
root for. While she isn't perfect, she cares about those around her and learns
from her mistakes, which is an excellent example for readers of all ages. She
finds herself attached to Jameson, as well as Grayson who seems to want to
help. Then there is Xander who may be the most intelligent member of this cast
as well as Nash who seems nonchalant about the whole charade. They all have a game to play as well, and I don't think that
we've uncovered the end of the games that Tobias left behind for Avery and his
Grandsons. Then there's the mystery that her own mother took to the grave when
she said, "I have a secret."
After living with her older sister and struggling to
get by, she enters a strange world of money, power, danger, and family secrets
where everyone seems to be carrying daggers ready to stab Avery in the back.
The closer she gets to the truth as to why she was chosen to be the heir, her
relationships with the boys, and her very survival are tested. Even though the
boys and Avery have vastly different agendas, they end up working together to
solve the games puzzles and clues. Just when you think you have solved the clues;
each clue revealed another secret.
This was a fantastic mystery with a lot of twists and
turns right up until the final page. Give this to fans of the high stakes teen
mystery of One of Us is Lying, the clever puzzles and riddles of The
Westing Game, the love triangle of Jenny Han's The Summer I Turned Pretty,
and the clever, snarky, high stakes action of Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls
series.
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