I finished February strong with a domestic thriller that was SO MUCH FUN! And it's not the first thriller from this author that captivates me so much I cannot put the book down!
 |
| ★★★★★ |
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins is more drama than thriller, but it packs a lot of twists and turns and punches too! It follows Camden, as he returns to his family home after his mother's death and after inheriting the house and money he wants nothing to do with, and he wants even less to spend any extra time with his mother's family.
"One rarely finds salvation in Florida."
Let's Meet the Family
The matriarch. She was not just any old woman, she was Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore, the richest woman in North Carolina and also the most notorious. Kidnapped when she was a toddler, then married four times, all four husbands dead under suspicious circumstances.
The husbands... well, Ruby will tell you about them in her letters. We get Ruby's POV through the letters and we learn more about Ruby and her husbands through newspaper articles spread around the book.
On the side of the surviving McTavishes we have aunt Nelle, Ruby's sister, always jealous of Ruby, and her children: Ben, an estate lawyer trying to find a loophole in Ruby's will and Libby, an Instagram influencer willing to do whatever she can to get her hands on the inheritance. They all hate Camden. Wanna know the reason why? Read the book, duh!
"He was twenty-five years my senior, and handsome in a bland way—comforting, familiar, will do in a pinch, but nothing to get all that excited about. The saltines and tomato soup of men."
The House
Camden is our main POV, he moved away from the McTavish house, Ashby House, as soon as he could and he lives a nice happy life in Colorado with his wife, Jules. And Jules is our third POV, Jules who absolutely loves Camden but who knows he deserves the inheritance and they should keep it. And especially keep Ashby House, which Jules fell in love with as soon as she stepped inside.
Last year I read The Villa by Rachel Hawkins and she has a thing for houses and all the covers of her books seem to be house related - walls or wallpapers and a little tiny detail that makes you think of a house. I am sure Hawkins loves to introduce the houses in her books as characters of sorts, just there in the background but also at the forefront of the story. Houses know, houses remember. And I love books with houses, about houses.
"...you can put miles and mountains between you and home, but eventually, home will call you back."
Expect the Unexpected
While it's not a crime thriller per se, The Heiress is just as fun, full of twists and turns - some that I didn't even see coming! I just couldn't stop reading this book and any thriller that can do that gets me excited and happy.
The characters are complex, even though they like to think about themselves and others as either good or bad, we have an array of grey characters ready to join in the drama of this book. Speaking of drama, there are a few nods here and there to gothic literature and I found those absolutely delicious!
It's dark, it's thrilling, it's exciting, it's ADDICTIVE! Expect the unexpected!
"So, yeah, fucking sue me: when I found out the man I was married to had access to that kind of wealth, but wouldn’t touch it because the family who adopted him was a bag of dicks? I thought, Fuck that, and tried to figure out how to fix it."
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins was first published in January 2024
Check out my Book Review Index!