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The Inheritance Games
9 MILLION COPIES SOLD OF THE #1 BESTSELLING SERIES! 'A MASTER OF PUZZLES AND PLOT TWISTS' E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars The romantic, addictive and twisty mystery, full of dark family secrets and deadly stakes that's 'impossible to…
- Release Date
- 2020
- Length
- 253 pages
- Publisher
- Penguin UK
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Our Review
About the book
Avery Grambs, a teenager living out of her car, learns that billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, a man she never met, has left her nearly his entire fortune. To claim it she must move into Hawthorne House alongside the family he disinherited, including four grandsons who are determined to uncover why she was chosen.
Our review
A billionaire’s will, a house full of secret passages and four suspicious grandsons make for a wildly fun YA puzzle.
Barnes knows exactly what kind of fantasy she’s selling, and she sells it with gusto. The setup, a poor girl inheriting a fortune and a mystery at once, is instantly hooky, and Hawthorne House is a marvelous playground of hidden staircases, coded letters and riddles left by a man who loved games. Avery’s practical intelligence makes her easy to root for, and the puzzles are a pleasure to try solving alongside her.
Underneath the fun, the characterization is thin. The Hawthorne brothers are drawn in broad types, the brooding one, the charming one and so on, and the romance takes up a lot of space without much development. A few twists rely on information withheld from the reader rather than clues fairly laid out. But as an escapist mystery for teens and adults who like their stories glossy and clever, it delivers.
What we loved
- The irresistible inheritance premise
- Hawthorne House and its intricate puzzles
- A resourceful, grounded heroine
Keep in mind
- The brothers lean on familiar character types
- Some twists aren’t fairly clued
Read it if you like
Fans of Knives Out, Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game, or E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.
The verdict
An escapist, puzzle-packed YA mystery that’s easy to devour, even if its characters are drawn more boldly than deeply.
