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This series is one I received during the winter holidays and have been hearing about for a long time. This is not the type of book I would normally gravitate towards, I’m usually a fantasy or horror reader, not often dipping my toes into the realm of mysteries. However, when I was given the opportunity to pick up a new book to read after months of being stuck in a reading slump, this book caught my eye.
The back of book description for the first book goes as follows:
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 conwoman, 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.
At the point that I picked up this book, I was desperate. Reading is a huge part of who I am, and I often find myself more stressed than usual when I’m not reading. Of course, at this point it wasn’t a matter of time for me, I just couldn’t find anything that really caught my attention.
I picked the first book of the series up the day after Christmas and finished reading it within the week. I think part of the reason I was so enthralled by this story was due to the fact that it’s not my normal read, but that’s hardly the only reason.
The Inheritance Games follows Avery Kylie Grambs as she’s suddenly thrust into a world she never imagined she would be a part of, given billions and an empire to her name by a man that she’s never met.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes writes characters that have ever-changing levels of depth, she makes you hang on through all three books if only because you want to learn more about these characters that seem buried in mental mysteries of their own.
I’m only talking about the books in the original trilogy now, I haven’t read the other books in this universe yet but they’re definitely on my list. The author has gotten me invested in these characters in a way that few authors have managed to do over my years of reading.
Being a writer while reading this book gives me an appreciation for it that I’m not sure I would've have had otherwise. As a writer, I’ve always wanted to write a mystery of my own, which of course means I’ve thought far too much about the depth that you have to go to write a mystery, to create one of your own that won’t be given away too early or be too outlandish.
Barnes does this incredibly well, and even more so the puzzle-loving characters made following the mysteries set out by Tobias Hawthorne alongside them all the more enjoyable. Honestly, all of the characters and the relationships and the twisted schemes made this series incredibly enjoyable for me to read.
Avery was an incredibly complex and competent character, whose lack of trust for just about anyone, in the beginning, was honestly kind of amusing as she was trying to survive in this new world, all while looking at the people trying to help her, with a raised eyebrow as if to say, “What do you want?”
Her skeptical nature ended up saving her and the people she grew to care about later in the series, and it was incredibly fulfilling to see just how much she had grown. It wasn’t just her either, some authors forget to develop characters outside of the main character throughout their series' but Barnes was able to avoid this. The other characters, the Hawthorne brothers, her own sister, and friends, grew just as much as she did throughout the series.
In truth, I really enjoyed this series, far more than I was expecting too. It brought me out of a months-long reading slump and for that I’m grateful to the author and all of her characters that helped.
About The Author
Milla Picket is a senior at Poudre High School, and this is her first year writing for the Poudre Press. In her free time, she is involved in the school's choir and theatre department. She is also a writer currently working on her first fantasy novel for publication.
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