The Inheritance Games
Sarah Gerovac
Hamilton’s “Novel Idea” book club recently met to discuss our March book, The Inheritance Games. This fun, fast-paced work of fiction that is just realistic enough to keep the reader’s attention is an entertaining and quick read. As the story unfolds, Avery, a witty and intelligent, but poor teenager living with her sister and her sister’s abusive boyfriend, is just trying to make it through high school. She’s perfectly content to spend her afternoons texting her best friend and playing chess with a local homeless man, until one day she’s confronted with an incredibly wealthy-looking businesswoman who insists on flying her across the country to attend the will reading of a billionaire she’s never met, Tobias Hawthorne.
Upon finding out that this billionaire who always had a puzzle up his sleeve has left his entire inheritance and estate to her, and subsequently disinherited the rest of his now incredibly furious family, Avery doesn’t know what to do with herself. She is left with only her sister, best friend, and Hawthorne’s four grandsons as company as she tries to make sense of her new situation and decipher why she was thrust into it. To add to her apprehension, she must live in Hawthorne House for a full year with the rest of the Hawthornes to claim the money, but she also cannot simply refuse or the money will all be given away to charity and the family will be just as upset with her.
The novel, which combines a perfect combination of a fast-paced story that can be read in a single sitting, an plot with enough twists and turns to make it consistently interesting, and elements of mystery and ludicrous fiction that speak to the style of other new mysteries like the hugely popular Knives Out, make it quite an entertaining read. On the plot twists, book club member Madison Versh noted that, “I thought it was a little easy to predict, but I really liked it.” Member Sydney Vande Hei explained, “plotwise the book was really good,” and that it was a part of the novel that she really enjoyed. On the ridiculous situation of randomly inheriting billions of dollars, member Mikayla Cunningham noted, “I struggled at the beginning because I thought it was so outlandish...once I got into it, I thought it was a fun book to read… the puzzles kept it going.”
While we agreed that some of the twists and turns were somewhat predictable, and more effort could have taken place to tie up at least a few loose ends, it didn’t take away from the fact that this was a very entertaining book to read. However, if you’re looking for the satisfaction of a cleanly tied up mystery, you certainly won’t find it here, as there are many occurrences left unexplained and plenty of questions left unanswered. The unfinished nature of the book leaves it in the prime position to be followed by its sequel, which will be released next September.
Overall, book club members agreed that the novel was quite an entertaining read, especially pertaining to the relationships that Avery developed with the grandsons. One of the brothers, Nash, wasn’t particularly angry about the family’s loss of money, and developed a friendly relationship with Avery. Another book club member noted, “I liked Nash because he didn’t care about the wealth and wasn’t really a threat… when she arrived.”
The youngest brother, Xander, was a friendly and highly intelligent ‘engineer’ who performed plenty of his own interesting experiments and had fun showing Avery around the house. Vande Hei said, “I liked Xander because he was friendly and actually wanted her to be there.” Although it seems unlikely that any of the brothers would take a particular liking to the girl that had “stolen” their family’s entire fortune, the bonds that Avery created with them over the course of the story were interesting and often an entertaining piece of the plot. Ultimately, the book club agreed that this is a novel we’d certainly recommend, and this fast-paced, fun fiction and mystery novel is a perfect choice for an afternoon of entertainment.
