Review: The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

August 23, 2021August 23, 2021 I'm All Booked Up YA

The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)

Avery Grambs just wants to get to college as soon as possible. She’s tired of living with her sister Libby and Libby’s on again off again abusive boyfriend Drake. Her best chance of leaving is a college scholarship.

However, when someone named Grayson Hawthorne shows up at school and says that his grandfather mentioned Avery in his will, Avery and Libby travel to Texas to learn about the mysterious billionaire Tobias Hawthorne.

Tobias Hawthorne has four grandsons, they all have the same mother and different fathers. Grayson, Jameson, Xander and Nash expected to inherit a fortune. What they got: hardly anything. Tobias left almost everything to Avery, a total stranger. There’s only one catch: Avery has to live in the Hawthorne mansion for an entire year to get the money.

With people out to get her and unraveling the mystery of Tobias Hawthorne, Avery doesn’t know who she can trust. But this gigantic puzzle was meant to be solved and only Avery, with the help of the Hawthorne brothers, can learn the truth.

Wow, Barnes has done it again. We loved this book and we mean LOVED IT! After finishing The Naturals series, we knew we had to read The Inheritance Games. The comparison to Knives Out had us so pumped to read about this twisted family mystery.

Everyone else in our book club loved this pick too. We loved Avery as an MC for her quick wit and good heart. We knew from the opening scenes that she would be a total badass. She was fierce and loyal to her sister. As far as YA MCs go, she’s one of the best.

The only disagreement came over which guy we shipped Avery with, Grayson or Jameson. Grayson had the more brooding personality and was skeptical of Avery from the start. While Jameson was a lot more outgoing and into his grandfather’s riddles. Our book club was split down the middle for the ship and Barnes left it open ended, so we can’t wait to see what happens in The Hawthorne Legacy.

As far as the riddles and puzzles went, Barnes did an amazing job of placing certain clues throughout the story. The pacing was perfect and we liked how short the chapters were! She clearly did her research for The Inheritance Games and we found it so hard to put down.

The ending had us so excited. Barnes placed some small details at the beginning of the book that became so important in the last few chapters. However, she also left us with a few major cliffhangers. We have so many questions that we need answered ASAP.

Overall, this YA thriller lived up to our high expectations. We are so pumped for The Hawthorne Legacy releasing on September 7th. We recommend this to everyone who wants to read a book with non-stop excitement.

P.S. If you’re on TikTok, be sure to check out this book’s tag. The hot takes on it are FIRE and we loved fangirling along with the rest of BookTok! Trust us, you’ll want to chat about this with everyone you meet! 😉

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐