The Inheritance Games

The Inheritance Games Book Review by Jennifer Lynn Barnes 

This book was so fun. 

It took me a hot minute to really immerse myself in the new overwhelming world of Avery Kylie Gramb’s, but once I did I couldn’t put it down. 

The Inheritance Games is about a seventeen-year-old girl that suddenly finds herself the almost sole inheritor of a multi-billion dollar inheritance from an old man that she hasn’t even met or heard of. 

Bewildered and shocked, Avery hesitantly accepts. It beats living in her car or with her sister and her abusive boyfriend at least. 

The only stipulation? 

She has to live at Hawthorne House-a sprawling manor that has more tricks, secret passages, and riddles than it does acres and boy, does it span a huge expanse of land. 

Of course, she’s not living in this enormous mansion alone. The catch to her new found inheritance comes in the form of the late Tobias Hawthorne’s four grandsons: all brilliant, all scheming, all beautiful, and all probably out to get her. 

Avery, the four grandsons, and the rest of the Hawthorne estate then embark on a mystery trying to solve the late old man’s will and to answer the question: why Avery?

Why Avery, indeed. 

What comes next is a sprawling and magnanimous puzzle book shrouded in mystery. As Avery and the rest of the characters are obsessively finding red acetate, hidden code, and avoiding death threats, you as a reader are doing your best to guess along with them. 

I would like to proudly proclaim that one theory I had only a few pages in was right. Yes, in case you were wondering, I do feel immeasurably pleased with myself. I won’t give away what I was right about however, as a book like The Inheritance Games is best ingested spoiler-free and left up to your own devices. 

As I said in the beginning, this book was a lot of fun. Books that keep you guessing are always a thrill-ride and this novel was no exception. Some of the riddles and mysteries are obviously impossible to guess beforehand due to lack of knowledge, but not much we can do about that there. 

Avery as a main character is fine. I like her enough. Nothing about her sticks out extremely to me, but she plays the stubborn, headstrong girl archetype well. She’s smart, which I appreciate, but she’s just as obsessed with romance as she is about inheriting a whole fortune, a manor, hundreds of assets including a sports team, a philanthropic foundation worth billions, and I’m sure much more, but she doesn’t ask about them and doesn’t seem to care. 

Which is ridiculous to me. If I suddenly inherited billions over night I’m pretty sure romance would be the last thing on my mind, but maybe that's just me. This is YA after all, can’t have a main female character without a crush (or multiple for that matter!).

She’s a bit too...perfect. Just a bit. She’s smart, she’s kind, she’s selfless. 

Just a little bit boring. A teeny tiny bit. 

The four Hawthorne grandsons are all very interesting, but they also seem a bit one dimensional to me. I could outline them all into a box. Nash is the outlandish cowboy, Grayson is the perfect austere businessman, Jameson is the renegade bad-boy, and Xander is the mad inventor. I liked them all well enough, don’t get me wrong, but it was as if Barnes dedicated two or so traits to each boy and left it at that. 

Once again, I like them all (although truth be told the whole schtick with Xander and scones got really old, really fast for me), but there was something about them that didn’t make me love them. I can’t pinpoint it exactly other than all of them seem just a bit too stereotypical of their particular archetypes for me personally. 

None of the other characters stood out to me all that much actually, other than Emily, who for non-spoiler like reasons I won’t get into, but I’m sorry we don’t see more of her as she seems really fascinating as a character.

To me, this book’s strengths lie heavily in the plot and the need to have the puzzle solved. I love riddles and tricks as much as the next person and the weirdly short chapters kept me engaged and kept me guessing. 

I love that everyone was brilliant and that everyone had hidden motives, but I personally wanted more with their characters and especially their relationships to each other. 

All in all, this book was a roller coaster and one that I would ride again and again. I don’t remember the last time I read a book so entrenched in mystery and puzzles or one that kept me so much on my toes. 

The plot is fun, the characters get the job done, and I’m already counting down the days until Barnes strikes again and we can once again unravel the next mystery of Tobias Hawthorne’s and Avery Grambs. 

Recommendation: Like crossword puzzles? Are you good at Clue? Do you appreciate riddles and layered nuances? If the answer is yes to any of the above, then you will love The Inheritance Games. Add in a good old dash of young love, some tragic backstories, wealth upon wealth, and not one, not two, not three, but four handsome boys all available for our dear bachelorette of a  main character and you’ve got yourself a mystery you won’t want to put down. 

Score: 8/10