The Inheritance Games ♥ Jennifer Lynn Barnes ♥ The Inheritance Games #1

Published September 2020 ♥ Published by Little Brown Books for Young Readers

A Cinderella story with deadly stakes and thrilling twists, perfect for fans of One of Us is Lying and Knives Out.

❥ Young Adult Mystery

❥ Love Triangle

❥ Wealthy Family & A Girl Who Inherits Billions

❥ Riddles & Puzzles

The Inheritance Games Review

Major spoilers

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a Young Adult Mystery novel. It screams Knives Out from the very first page to the very last. I read this as part of a Goodreads group reading challenge, but I doubt I’ll be reading the sequel.

No shade. The book was good – just not for me.

If I was fifteen or twenty years younger, with rose-coloured glasses on, still believing in fairytales I probably would have loved this book. Alas, I have been jaded & damaged by the world, and this type of Cinderella fairytale no longer captures my heart. Nonetheless, Barnes wrote an amazing story for young adults.

Sixteen-year-old Avery doesn’t have an easy life. Do they ever? Avery lives with her half-sister Libby, both of them struggling to make ends meet. I wish there had been more interactions between Libby & Avery. I liked Libby, the girl was going through some serious shit. There was so much potential for her storyline. However, other than Avery needing a legal guardian, there was next to no reason for Libby. The two sisters barely interacted, and her storyline just kind of floundered around for convenience.

Billionaire Tobias Hawthorne has left his fortune to Avery.

All Avery must do, spend a year in Hawthorne House with the Hawthorne family. Avery has no idea who Tobias Hawthorne is, or why he left her billions of dollars. & the Hawthorne family has no idea why their patriarch left their fortune to Avery. As it turns out, Avery is just a piece of a puzzle. A puzzle left for Hawthrone’s grandsons.

It’s all fun and games until we discover Tobias Hawthorne is a real dick.

The Hawthorne’s are something else man. Skye and Zara are the daughters of Tobias Hawthrone. Their brother Toby died twenty years ago. Zara is essentially harmless, her father’s will is iron-clad after all. Skye Hawthorne on the other hand is the ultimate weirdo mother. She wanders around the mansion half-naked and drunk, insisting her children call her Skye. Skye’s four sons, by four different baby daddies, have basically been raised by their grandfather.

Hopefully they all go to therapy regularly.

Avery teams up with grandson Jameson to work through the mystery of why Avery? There is nothing inherently special about her. Unfortunately, even in the end, there wasn’t any real reason why Tobias chose her. Luck and happenstance, at least for now. Avery pieces together the history of Hawthorne House, working through the various clues old man Hawthorne left his grandsons. All while having someone trying to kill her.

You can’t inherit billions of dollars without some feathers getting ruffled.

Overall this was a good story. The writing was well done, and the storyline was okay. Sometimes I read young adult novels & well, I wouldn’t give them to a young adult. Barnes tale, on the other hand, has just about everything I’d think a young person would want without making parents uncomfortable.

I would have liked to read this when I was in my mid teens.

Avery finds herself falling for not one, but two of the Hawthorne grandsons. The romance aspect of the story was stubble and not in your face. There was no sex or making out in secret tunnels. Just a girl spending time with a boy and falling for him. Even the murder plot is tame. Although, I maintain that the murder plot could have been much better if Barnes had built up Avery and Libby’s relationship more.

❥ Jennifer Lynn Barnes Webpage ♥ Goodreads ♥ Instagram