The Inheritance Games

Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Rating: 1/5

Description:

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 con-woman, 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.

The Inheritance Games:

When I write a review, I always want to be completely sincere regarding my opinion. And honestly, I hated this book. Now, for those of you who enjoyed this book – please, don’t come for my neck. This is my opinion and it just happens to be how I feel about this book. If you loved The Inheritance Games, I don’t recommend reading my review because I don’t necessarily have anything good to say.

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Where do I begin? Let’s start with the book itself. The chapters are annoyingly short. Now, I can appreciate a book with short chapters but it felt like these chapters were just too short. Going hand in hand with this is the fact that a chapter sometimes ends unexpectedly. I’d anticipate something and the chapter finishes, only for the next one to pick up after that scene occurs, with Avery giving us a watery summary of what happened. This was a systematic theme. A major problem of mine was that some chapters didn’t pour into the next. There’d be a sudden small time skip. What happened? I’d like to know.

The mystery of it all is so babyish. The clues left behind, the riddle, everything feels like it was set up by a toddler. That ending was so bad and I saw it coming from a mile away. Don’t even get me started on how effortlessly Avery and the sons figured things out, only accentuating that the mystery was set up for a toddler. It’s like the explanations are right in front of them the whole time and they notice it two seconds later. I also feel like there was so much dialogue with too few descriptions. The gaps in between were filled with: Avery stating the obvious, Avery being attracted to the two brothers at arbitrary times, Avery just knowing something and stating it; which leaves us in the dark because we have no idea how she got to that judgment.

The Writing:

Moving onto the writing. I harbour no animosity towards the author, once again, this is just my opinion on the book and not Jennifer Lynn Barnes. The writing was painfully monotonous, and I’m not exaggerating at all. As of page 187, I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters because I had zero attachments to them, solely based on the way they were written. Everything was so fast-paced, making it feel like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I would’ve liked for the author to put more attention on the house, the main setting. It’s supposed to be this immense enigma with secret passageways, rooms that can only be unlocked a certain way. But, it’s like the author breezes over details. We witness a few things but it gets left at that. The writing feels snappy, like there was mostly telling and not showing, especially when it came to features and emotion. This could very well be my biggest peeve with this book.

Telling and Not Showing:

I think this merited its own little section. Let me just give some examples. Avery considers herself an extraordinarily good guesser, a better guesser than the average person. But we never get to see her brain in motion, get to witness how she comes to her determinations. Instead, she straight-out tells us instead of showing us. Now, I’m not asking for anything extravagant. I just want to know why she guessed that answer, there had to have been some reasoning behind it. I keep being told things instead of shown.

Another example, Avery tells me that Grayson is hurt by the words. There’s no description of his features changing, whatsoever. I cannot envision Grayson being hurt because Avery isn’t showing me, she’s telling me. The author also tries her best to tell us that Avery is a mathematical genius but we don’t see it. And when it does get to a part where she can use her skill, the author cuts the scene and picks things up afterwards. A few big words are dropped so we can see she knows what she’s talking about. Also, Alisa is constantly warning Avery to keep up appearances and to behave. When Avery steps out of line, I wanted to see Alisa reprimand her for acting impulsively. But all we get is a diluted overview of Avery telling us what happened.

I hate that revelations were thrown in haphazardly, hurled at our faces instead of there being a buildup. Rebecca is a prime example, that specific scene when Avery takes a seat next to her. I’ve never seen Rebecca, she was never mentioned. Basically, no hints were dropped. Everything just went from 0 to 100. Literally. Rebecca drops a major bomb on Avery and contrary to what the author was aiming for, which was surprise, I wasn’t surprised. And do you know why I wasn’t surprised? Because you’re showing me Rebecca for the first time and everything about that scene suggests something is going to happen, all hints are dropped in that one nanosecond. What does this mean? You didn’t disperse those hints. You dropped them there and didn’t let them flourish. The revelation fell flat and felt, again, like I was being told something.

Can I just say that I haven’t witnessed Thea striving for anything yet, or standing up for something she believed in? So, I was a little perplexed when she brought up feminism at the table. It was awkwardly placed because the author is telling me Thea is a feminist, at a completely haphazard point, when she had every scene with Thea to drop inklings that could show me Thea is a feminist. I’m all for feminism. My main issue with this scene, other than the telling and not showing, is that the dialogue between Thea and Xander is sharp and kind of feels like the author mentions feminism just for the sake of it. Plus, I haven’t seen Thea being a bad bleep or acting evil. This whole book consists of characters TELLING me things about other characters instead of the author showing me.

The Romance:

The supposed romance feels beyond forced as if scenes were placed at random whilst the plot unfolded. To be honest, it feels like the author had her plot and wrote her book, but then discovered at the last second that she didn’t add romance. She then has to go back and scatter romance where she can. It feels like that. We have Avery remarking how she feels around Jameson, for example. It’s supposed to be romantic because being with him makes her feel free and all that jazz, but it comes across as forced. I can’t connect with her on this level because I cannot comprehend WHY she feels this way. There’s no buildup, just feeling things at aimless moments in the story.

I detest the parts where Avery mentions something about being attracted to either Jameson or Grayson because, once again, it’s random. I was given no signs of there being an attraction. There’s no fleeting touches, longing glimpses or secret smiles. There could be but I think the author failed, because she tells me things. We have Avery suddenly mentioning her “fitting perfectly” against Jameson or how she loves when Grayson says the word “empirically”.

“I could feel something, the same something that I’d felt when I brushed up against Grayson…” She thinks this when Jameson moves closer. Bruh. What you’re feeling is my ardent aggravation at the fact that you have no chemistry with either of these losers. I can’t even tell the difference between them. I didn’t fangirl over the kiss scene because there was absolutely no chemistry, no tension between them throughout the book, no matter how much the author shoved the idea of them down our throats. I hated it.

The Characters:

Let’s start with Avery. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever hated a main character as much as I hate her. I truly despised the way she had access to things when trying to decipher a puzzle. How did she get that right so easily? There was minimal, if not, no effort. She also asks super intimate questions and they just give her the answers. Skye never divulged to anyone the reasoning behind her sons’ middle names, not even them and no matter how much Jameson needles her. But she tells Avery the second she asks? There wasn’t even a basis behind this. I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, hoping that Skye telling her the answer so readily would lead to something important. It didn’t.

Avery acts as if she’s known everyone for years, feels insulted when they leave her out and feels like she has a say in their personal matters. It’s bloody bothersome. I’ve lost count of the amount of times she’d think that she “couldn’t help but notice she didn’t fit in” or she “didn’t belong here”. That’s because she doesn’t. She’s a literal outsider that was placed in the centre of their family drama. Don’t get me started on her always comparing herself to Emily, especially when around Grayson and Jameson. She wonders if they’re thinking of Emily, seeing Emily when they look at her or if they still hold the thought of Emily higher than the thought of her. Avery pissed me off. She’s known them for… Actually, I don’t know how long she’s known them for because the whole book felt like a fever dream, but she definitely didn’t know them long enough to want to be more important to them than Emily was. Wtf?

Her thoughts are all over the place. It’s like she’s trying to show emotion to make us bond with her but it falls flat because it’s out of the blue. We have no idea that she’s feeling these things so when she ultimately admits it in her head, I’m shook. And not in a good way. More like, “HOW?!” Some of the things that she thinks of hold no relevance to anything or whatever is happening in that scene. For example, she thinks about Emily when nothing connects to her at that moment, nothing at all. “I pushed back the memory of Emily’s face.” Like what? Why are you thinking about Emily? Nobody even mentioned her and nothing happened that would make you think of her.

I’m so sick of Avery stating the obvious. Literally all the time. She states the bloody obvious. It makes it feel as if the author wasn’t sure the reader would apprehend what just happened so she has Avery state it. But like I said, the mystery is juvenile, so of course, we understand. Now we just have Avery stating the obvious. Sometimes I’m so vexed by Avery and what she concludes. It makes me wonder if we’re even witnessing the same story unfold.

Her thoughts make me want to physically gag in distress because I can’t comprehend why she’d think that or how she could be so blind to what’s happening. She looks too deeply into things and I have a sense the author wants to highlight how intelligent she is, that she sees riddles and games that nobody else can. But this doesn’t work because there’s no steady accumulation of the hints she’s put together. Somebody would say something and Avery turns into Aristotle, Descartes and Socrates combined. And I’m not exaggerating. This happens so many times where she dives a little too deep. Like, she should’ve stopped at just below the surface but Miss Girl went searching for the remains of the extinct Megalodon.

One thing I positively loathed, that made me livid, was when Avery said “I thought back to…” or “I remembered her/him telling me…” This is what I mean when I say she states the obvious. And she does it, in the same way, each time, making it seem redundant and like she spends the whole book remembering things that certain characters have told her about other characters. It sounds like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’m not. I’m reading the story that Avery is living, she has no reason to remind me every two seconds what happened. Because I still remember what happened three pages ago since the last time she reminded me. The stuff that she suddenly remembers or thinks back to is sometimes irrelevant to what is happening.

I just realised I’ve only spoken about Avery. Well, that’s because she’s the main character and I can’t be bothered with the others. Jameson is irritating and Grayson pisses me off. Their logic for hating each other is absurd. Honestly, everything is far-fetched. All these characters are so forgettable that I find myself disoriented when they’re mentioned. These are the only times I don’t get annoyed when Avery states the obvious because she reminds me who these characters are.

A lot of the characters were there just for the sake of being there. I can’t tell you what anyone looks like, not even Avery. I didn’t care for any of them, didn’t care what happened. By about 100 pages, I just wanted to know why she was chosen. I didn’t care how she got to the answer, I just wanted to know. But when I was almost at the end, I stopped caring altogether because I already knew what was going to happen. It was bitterly apparent. Personally, I think that the author didn’t execute the idea that she had appropriately. Emphasis on personally. Don’t attack me. I still respect the author because she writes books that little idiots like us get to read and review.

Conclusion:

I wasted money.