The Inheritance Games
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
read by Christie Moreau
Hachette Audio, 2020. 10 hours, 45 minutes.
Review written March 24, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Thanks to my friend Lisa for recommending this series to me. I’d seen the hype about the fourth book coming out this summer.
The Inheritance Games begins a series about a billionaire who died and who left puzzles for his family after him.
The biggest puzzle of all is why he left his entire multi-billion dollar estate to Avery Grahams, a teen who’d been living in her car before she got the news, in order to avoid her sister’s abusive boyfriend.
But Avery gets called to the reading of the will of Tobias Hawthorne, along with the whole family. She’s never met any of these people before. So she’s as shocked as anyone when she learns he’s left the bulk of his estate to her, passing over his grandsons, the four Hawthorne brothers.
There is a condition: She has to live in Hawthorne house for one year. It’s an enormous place, so it shouldn’t be difficult. But then someone apparently tries to kill her. And there’s the question of how she feels about the Hawthorne brothers. And she’s warned about the last girl at her new private school who lived at Hawthorne house and turned up dead.
Along with all that, the Hawthorne brothers tell her that their grandfather was always setting puzzles for them, and the letters left to them are obviously another puzzle. Avery thinks the solution to the puzzles may explain why he picked her to inherit.
But the question is: Is Avery’s existence at Hawthorne House just a part of the puzzle, or is this amazing inheritance due to something special about her?
This puzzle novel is fun, though I was a little disappointed that the clues weren’t such that the reader could really play along. Fun to watch them get solved, though. And I’m proud to say that I saw a twist at the end coming long before it happened.
And although they did solve a major puzzle in this book, the ending hints that there are more puzzles to come. The series was originally advertised as a trilogy, but book four is coming out this summer. I think I have been enticed into reading more books. And who doesn’t like a Cinderella story where a worthy but poor heroine comes into great wealth?
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/inheritance_games.html
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