The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Review

 

The Inheritance Games | Jennifer Lynn Barnes | Little, Brown | Pub: 9/1/20

“If yes is no and once is never, then how many sides does a triangle have?”

When this book was getting ready to come out and I saw the synopsis, I knew I needed it and I knew I would love it. I am a huge mystery book lover and a huge YA lover. So, I mean, I couldn’t go wrong here.

Avery is just your average high school kid. Trying to make it through by getting good grades, working at a diner to make some money to help her sister Libby with rent and treating a homeless man, Harry, to breakfast on the mornings she won chess against him.

What Avery didn’t expect was someone rich coming to her high school to get her because she is needed to be present for a reading of a will for someone she had never met.

As you can imagine, the will turns things all upside down and Avery is overwhelmed. She also gets to live at Hawthorne House, an endless mansion filled with secret passages and secret compartments. Tobias has left riddles and clues all over. With the help of the Hawthorne brothers, Avery must solve the riddles, but circumstances make things exceedingly difficult.

This book was so good! I really didn’t put much of it together while I was reading it. I had a hunch on one thing but not on all. It also leaves off in a weird way because there will be another book in the series. So while part of it is solved, more mysteries to be solved await us. I truly can’t wait for the next book. It is scheduled to be published in 2021 and I am going to assume it will be September again (I am hoping for earlier but who knows).

You do get to watch the characters grow a bit and I think that will continue in the next book. This book also helps to teach the importance of family as well as teaching you that your family can be wrong. Overall a wonderful book that I could have read in one day if I had the time. If you love mystery books or YA books, highly recommend.

Synopsis (Credit: Goodreads)

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.