Blurb:
She came from nothing.
Avery has a plan: keep her head down, work hard for a better future. Then an eccentric billionaire dies, leaving her almost his entire fortune. And no one, least of all Avery, knows why.
They had everything.
Now she must move into the mansion she’s inherited. It’s filled with secrets and codes, and the old man’s surviving relatives – a family hell-bent on discovering why Avery got “their” money.
Now there’s only one rule: winner takes all.
Soon she is caught in a deadly game that everyone in this strange family is playing. But just how far will they go to keep their future?
Rating: 5/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction
- Highly recommend for 13 years and above
- TW: Abusive relationship (emotional/physical), Alcohol abuse (implied), Cheating, Death of loved one/family member (including parental/grandparental), Gun violence, Manipulation, Murder/attempted murder
- Tropes: Billionaire, Dark Secret
Book Quotes:
- “Everything’s a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.”
- “Sometimes things that appear very different on the surface are actually exactly the same at their core.”
- “We aren’t normal. This place isn’t normal, and you’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.”
- “Why do I have to tell a story?” I asked. “Because if you don’t tell the story, someone else will tell it for you.”
- “As awful as it sounds, money is power, and power is magnetic.”
- “He left you the fortune, Avery, and all he left us is you.”
- “The more complicated a person’s strategy seemed, the less likely an opponent was to look for simple answers. If you could keep someone looking at your knight, you could take them with a pawn. Look past the details. Past the complications.”
- “Traps upon traps. And riddles upon riddles.”
- “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
- “It’s not just clothing. It’s a message. You’re not deciding what to wear. You’re deciding what story you want your image to tell. Are you the ingenue, young and sweet? Do you dress to this world of wealth and wonders like you were born to it, or do you want to walk the line: the same but different, young but full of steel?”
- “Sometimes you gotta excise a wound before it can heal.”
- “Better the devil you do know than the devil you don’t”
- “If there’s one thing the Hawthorne family isn’t, it’s fine. They were a twisted, broken mess before you got here, and they’ll be a twisted, broken mess once you’re gone.”
- “Thea isn’t a girl. She’s a whirlwind wrapped in a hurricane wrapped in steel.”
- “You don’t have to kiss me. You don’t even have to like me, Heiress, but please don’t make me do this alone.”
- “I will always protect you” he told me, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowed. “You deserve to feel safe in your own home. And I’ll help you with the foundation. I’ll teach you what you need to know to take this life like you were born to it. But this…us…” He swallowed. “It can’t happen, Avery. I’ve seen the way Jamerson looks at you.”
- “Jameson Winchester Hawthorne is hungry. He’s been looking for something. He’s been looking for it since the day he was born.”
- “Getting involved with Jameson would just be throwing gasoline on the fire.” “And what a lovely fire it would be,”
- “Where are you going?” I asked him. After everything it has taken to get to this point, he couldn’t just walk away. “To hell, eventually,” Jameson answered. “Probably to the wine cellar, for now.”
- “…but if there is one universal truth in the human experience, it is that a finely honed scone-eating palate does not just develop overnight.”
- “I am a human Rube Goldberg machine,” he said. “I do simple things in complicated ways”
- “Don’t be sorry, Ms. Grambs. Be worthy of it.”
- “Right.” Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “No feminism at the dinner table.”
- “That’s the thing, Mystery Girl. I don’t think I’m turning anything into a riddle. I don’t think I have to. You are a riddle, a puzzle, a game – my grandfather’s last.”
- “He was arrogant and awful and had spent the first week of our acquaintance dead set on making my life hell. He was still half in love with Emily Laughlin. But from the first moment I’d seen him, looking away had been nearly impossible. And at the end of the day, he’d chosen me. Over family. Over his mother.”
- “Giving money to individuals does little.” “It does a lot,” I said quietly, “for those people.”
- “I’m a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I’m no stranger to being hated”
- “why kill two birds with one stone when you can kill twelve”
- “There were people out there who might live or die because of me, futures good or bad might be realized because of my choices. What right did I even have to be the one making them?”
- “He gently traced the line of my jaw. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.” He thought he could protect me. He wanted to. He was touching me, and all I wanted was to let him. Let him protect me. Let him touch me.”
- “I wasn’t delusional. I wasn’t dreaming. I was an heiress.”
- “Hands reached past me to turn on the faucet. I should have jumped. I should have panicked. But somehow, my body relaxed into the person behind me.”
- “The old man would call us into his study and say the same three words. “Invest. Cultivate. Create.”
- “A person couldn’t be worthy of billions. It wasn’t possible—not for anyone, and definitely not for me.”
- “It might feel better to give to someone you know than a stranger, or to donate to an organization whose story brings a tear to your eye, but that’s your brain playing tricks on you. The morality of an action depends, ultimately and only, on its outcomes.”
- “Well, my other suggestion involves preemptively whacking the entire Hawthorne family, and I was afraid you’d take that as a euphemism.”
- “Do you know what philanthropist means?” Libby asked me seriously. “It means rich.”
- “I was supposed to have an edge. But sharp-edged girls had feelings, too.”
- “Is this all just a game to you?” “Everything’s game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.”