I've been trying to make my way through my backlog of ARCs and this month the one that won the lottery was "The Heiress" by Rachel Hawkins. The book was released on January 9th of this year so I figured it was good timing.
Technically this was the first adult novel I read from Rachel Hawkins but not really because I read her YA series 'Hex Hall' back in the early 2000s. She has also published a number of books under the name Erin Sterling -- The Ex Hex and The Kiss Curse.
The Heiress was a very different writing style from her Sterling novels which I find fascinating. Usually, when you read multiple books by the same author you can see their style come through. To be honest, until I was writing this post I forgot that she wrote The Ex Hex series. That's how different they are, which I guess is why she uses a pen name.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Heiress, especially since I've seen some less than satisfactory reviews of it but it was a really great story.
Publisher's Summary
When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman, she’s also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
But in the aftermath of her death, her adopted son, Camden, wants little to do with the house or the money―and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.
Ten years later, his uncle’s death pulls Cam and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but the legacy of Ruby is inescapable.
And as Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will––and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.
My Thoughts
The Heiress was spilt into multiple points of view and timelines; you got insight in Ruby's entire life story, were able to read what Jules was up to and find out why Camden hated his family. It was very obvious that everyone was hiding something but you truly had no idea what it was. Sure, it could've been a little predictable at times but I personally was shocked at every single thing that happened.
The book was definitely a little slow and picked up only towards the end. It wasn't overly detailed or unnecessarily long which I appreciated. Hawkins told the story pretty compactly and everything connected in a way that I wasn't expecting. Sometimes books with such robust back stories can drone on and on for too many pages but I didn't find that to be true with The Heiress; I felt like I got everything I needed in a decent amount of pages.
I really loved this book; it was a thriller and a mystery without being gory or graphic. The Heiress was filled with lies, secrets, mind games and family trauma. It had everything you could want out of a book and I personally think this would be a great 'thriller' for people who do not like those types of books. It's also a great book to pull you out of a reading slump.
Will you read The Heiress? If you have, what did you think?
xoxo
B
Add your comment