Pages: 368
Published: 30th August 2022
Genre: Young Adult Mystery
Content warnings: Suicide references
To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets, and they know her.
But as the clock ticks down to when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help – and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything. It soon becomes clear that there is one last puzzle to solve, and Avery and the Hawthorne brothers are drawn into a dangerous game against an unknown and powerful player.
The concluding chapter of a trilogy full of breathless action and devilish puzzles is one of rising stakes that culminates in a largely satisfactory resolution. With a stronger sense of character development plus the menace created by an interesting villain, it matches the excitement of the first two books while containing more urgency and tension.
Even in the face of some familiar problems such as the excessive number of characters, it is a typically entertaining story from start to finish, and you really do have to praise the author for the many clever and neatly spun riddles that are plentiful again here. As such, it is very addictive and the short chapters are merely an invitation to just keep on reading.
Avery Kylie Grambs is coming towards the end of her year-long stay at Hawthorne House, which was the main condition in Tobias Hawthorne’s last will and testament by which she would inherit his multi-billion dollar estate. She is firmly in a relationship with one of his grandsons, Jameson, and recently uncovered the truth of his estranged son Toby, but she is still a target for those who want to stake their own claim for her fortune.
She has already survived attempts to kidnap and assassinate her with the help of a sharp mind and her security detail, but now Avery is confronted by another adversary when she receives a message showing Toby has been captured. The person responsible sends her a number of subtle clues which she and the Hawthornes follow until finally discovering his identity.
While this is happening, Toby’s daughter Eve arrives at Hawthorne House, in need of their help. She arouses suspicion, but Avery decides to let her stay. What is most striking about Eve is that she looks just like Emily, the girl who Jameson and Grayson both loved before she took her own life, causing existing wounds to deepen. As Avery’s resolve is tested, she learns that Tobias Hawthorne’s decision to leave her his fortune was not quite as generous as she thought.
In terms of the various puzzles and the increasing tension, the plot was excellent. Although this one did not contain as many twists, there was a lot of clever misdirection as the question of whether or not to trust Eve always hung enticingly in the air, and the chess game at the end made for a thrilling showdown. If anything, the slightly less frantic pace compared to the previous two books was a good thing as it allowed things to be developed in more detail.
The same applies to many of the characters. The romance between Avery and Jameson felt more meaningful this time, and there was better balance with how much time was devoted to each of them. That said, there are still too many characters and that left some of their arcs seem rushed or unfinished – for example Xander meeting his father and Rebecca finding her independence.
Once again, the entire story is in the first person, told from Avery’s point of view. Living with the prodigious Hawthornes clearly has rubbed off on her as she seems to have the measure of all of them and has become quite the master problem solver, making me wonder if she is just a bit too smart to be considered realistic. Then again, many of the themes in this series are exaggerated and that is what makes it a fun premise, and you do still root for her.
All of that amounts to Avery’s voice being something of a whirlwind of thoughts, and even is she is unable to come up with a good name for a charitable foundation, she deserves further respect for holding an introverted birthday party. Anyway, as for the other main characters, Jameson is much more rounded here and more likeable as a result, while Grayson reveals his many layers and the determination she shows to overcome his hidden demons is one of the highlights.
The plot may be engaging and the villain impressively nuanced, but I did not care much for his backstory, which was elaborated on just a bit too much. Eve is hard to decipher at first, but either way she is a fighter, and it was an unsettling moment when Mrs Laughlin began speaking to her as though she was Emily. Meanwhile, Xander is just adorable, and the annoying Max luckily appears only fleetingly.
One disappointing aspect here was that we did not really get to discover any more of Hawthorne House. It is a setting of such immense potential and that was so evident in the first two parts of the trilogy, but this time there were hardly any new secrets to uncover. Instead, most of the secrets here focused on how the ever-scheming Tobias Hawthorne accrued his fortune.
The writing is energetic and inventive, and there is a lot of dialogue that brings a smile to your face, through humour or randomness; maybe both. But this does not overshadow the mystery and its high stakes. What I did find annoying though is the author’s insistence on writing Jameson and Grayson’s full names – including middle names – for emphasis. Once or twice is fine, but it occurs numerous times for no apparent reason.
Overall then, this is much like the rest of the series in that it has some minor frustrations, but is mostly a very enjoyable read. It is fast paced and the mystery that encircles the multitude of characters rarely stands still, and here it does deliver a strong final act after all the build-up, ensuring that Avery’s story ends in reasonably fitting fashion.
I really liked the greater character development and in particular the final scene with the chess game, but I did not love it any more than the other two – so it gets the same rating!
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Stephen Reads Books 