Tuesday, September 22, 2020

The Inheritance Games

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.

Book source ~ Tour
1 September 2020
YA | Mystery
384 Pages

My Rating ~ 4 bites and a nibble

17-yr-old Avery Grambs is barely scraping by. After her mom died when she was 15, her older half-sister took her in, but money is very tight and Avery has one more year of school to get through then she has plans, big plans, for herself. All of those plans go out the window when she receives word that she is the sole inheritor of a billionaire’s estate. Why he skipped his own daughters and his four grandsons to pass everything to Avery, she has no idea. She doesn’t even know who Tobias Hawthorne is. In order to inherit though she has to live in Hawthorne House for a year. The problem is, someone is a wee bit upset about the will because suddenly Avery’s life is in danger. A problematic oversight in that contentious document means she needs her security team more than ever now. Trying to solve the eccentric billionaire’s last riddle and find out who is trying to kill her are two problems of many Avery could do without. But she’s been thrown into the deep end and was never one to just give up. Let the race begin.

Who wouldn’t want to inherit a multi-billion dollar estate? It sounds like a fairy tale come true. Until you realize just how much work an estate that ginormous entails. Still, I know I’d be happy to take it on if it meant security for myself and my family and a chance to do real good in the world.

Avery is a unique teenager. Because of how she grew up she is resilient and she’s smart. She’s more than capable of taking on the last riddle of Tobias Hawthorne. And his four grandsons. The question is, which one of the handsome young men will she fall for? Because you know she will. Personally, I don’t like any of them though I like one better than the others and one much less so. I’ll be interested to see how they are in the next book. Avery is a great character. She keeps her head and doesn’t get all flighty. She handles herself well. Her half-sister pisses me off most of the time. However, I like her better by the end. The writing is awesome and the plot is decent. If you’re a fan of riddles (I’m not, but that's ok) then this is a great book for you. It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle and tied with a danger bow. Grab it today!

The Author
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (who mostly goes by Jen) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has been, in turn, a competitive cheerleader, a volleyball player, a dancer, a debutante, a primate cognition researcher, a teen model, a comic book geek, and a lemur aficionado. She's been writing for as long as she can remember, finished her first full book (which she now refers to as a "practice book" and which none of you will ever see) when she was still in high school, and then wrote Golden the summer after her freshman year in college, when she was nineteen.

Jen graduated high school in 2002, and from Yale University with a degree in cognitive science (the study of the brain and thought) in May of 2006. She'll be spending the 2006-2007 school year abroad, doing autism research at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

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