When I started The Inheritance Games, I was expecting a good Westing Game retelling with complex puzzles and a game that was worth reading about.
I didn’t get that.
Before we get into the reasons why this isn’t my favorite ever, let’s get a summary. Avery Grambs is a down on her luck high schooler who lives with her sister, and occasionally, her sister’s abusive boyfriend. One day, she gets called into the principal’s office, and soon she is whisked away to the billionaire world of Tobias Hawthorne, a dead man who left Avery his entire fortune. Obviously, the family has issues, but Avery and a Hawthorne, Jameson, team up to find out the secrets of the will, and why a nobody who isn’t closely related to Tobias got his entire fortune.
First off, I read the official summary and thought, “Oh sweet, a Westing Game retelling! Sounds great!” If that’s your idea, then stay away, because what this book ended up being was a half-baked story idea that attempted to be complex and smart, when really what happened was some weird love triangles, shallow characters, and almost no descriptors where it mattered, but tons of descriptions when it didn’t. To paint a picture for you, I didn’t even know that the brothers were 17-18 until my friend pointed it out for me, and even then, she admitted to not knowing that one of the brothers (Xander) was 17! That’s just insane to me. What’s also insane is how I thought that this book would be about, you know, the inheritance game. Instead, it was about wanting a harem with two brothers, Avery not believing how rich she was, and Avery (and all of her team) not being prepared to be that rich. Bottom line: I think it says something that my favorite character was one we only saw like 5 times in the entire book.