The Heiress
The Heiress
By: Rachel Hawkins
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
“‘For Camden. Time Brings All Things To Pass.’ And as I drive away from the new life that I’d built for myself, heading back towards my past, I wonder if those words were supposed to be an encouragement or a warning. Or a threat.”
“You should have stayed away, Camden. I think you’ll be sorry that you didn’t.”
This is my second Rachel Hawkins book— last year I read The Villa. I think I’m going to be done with this author. Both books had 100 f-words so I’m assuming that’s the norm for her and it’s gonna be a dealbreaker for me. Not to mention I don’t really find her characters very likeable either.
Her writing has the twisty dysfunctional families vibe and there’s just not enough interesting or quality suspense/mystery to make the rest worth it.
I’m disappointed because I had this book on my list of Most Anticipated Books of this year, but so was The Villa the year before so I think I need to finally learn my lesson.
Basic Premise
The heiress is Ruby McTavish Kellmore, kidnapped for 8 months at age three but then found and grew up to inherit the family fortune instead of her sister (Nelle); receiver of the nickname Ruby Kill-more due to the deaths of her four husbands; suspected to not actually be Ruby; and dead for ten years now yet still pulling the strings with her money.
Camden is the son she adopted later in her life and the subsequent heir and current holder of the family fortune. He tried to escape that life and family but has been called back home to deal with some pressing matters.
Nelle and her descendants want the money they believe is rightfully theirs. When Cam and his wife get back to the family estate so begins a game of legal discoveries, threats, and such that leads to at least one other death.
People aren’t who they say they are and the money may destroy them all before anyone can even spend it.
The formatting of the book is a mixture of first person POV chapters of Camden and his wife, Jules, with a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, and a series of letters written at the hand of Ruby before she died telling us what really happened to all of her husbands.
I’m not always a fan of the letter trope because the writer always narrates in an unnatural manner and gives details they would never normally give. They are needed for us readers to understand more of the story, but that’s not my preferred method of obtaining information.
I liked the setting of the book— the woods of North Carolina.
And I was intrigued by the plot and the mystery of the heiress and her husbands, but I didn’t really like any of the characters. I feel neutral about Cam but that’s because he’s the ‘hero’ character who is kinda flat and uninteresting. And really the swearing kinda ruined my ability to be invested in the story. At least it had a mostly satisfying ending.
Recommendation
If you don’t care about swearing and you like soap opera-type mysteries, you may like this, but overall I feel like there are better books than this to read.
I would probably instead recommend the book The Rosewood Hunt. It’s also about a rich matriarch who basically owns a town and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The difference is that when she dies, though there are heirs, the money is missing and there is a hunt to figure out what she did with it.
It’s a YA book (though I would still say more for adult audience), but I found that book a lot more likeable than this one. It still has swearing, but probably about half of what is in The Heiress.
[Content Advisory: 94 f-words, 65 s-words; sexual references but nothing too graphic; trigger warning for (a little bit of) domestic abuse]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book just released January 9, 2024. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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