Warning: The following review may contain spoilers for The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, reader’s discretion is advised.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to be this quick with the book and if I am honest, I could have had this review a week ago. In case you missed it, I found Jennifer Lynn Barnes‘ young adult mystery/thriller (with a touch of romance) The Inheritance Games, to be more than enjoyable. After slogging through what is best described as narrative hell week-in and week-out, a logical puzzle filled with teenagers I didn’t want to throw into a burning building to save a dog filled me with joy. It is a touch of Knives Out, a touch of teen drama, and a splash of Jason Bourne action with Oren pulling the bullet out of a tree, it caught me at the perfect time.

Of course, as soon as I finished The Inheritance Games, I jumped head-first into The Hawthorne Legacy with that morish cliffhanger dangling overhead. This is going to be a convoluted way of saying this, but it is in aid of avoiding spoilers: I did write off what this sequel focuses on as what it was when it first appeared in The Inheritance Games. If I hadn’t made that connection as soon as it appeared in the last book, I may have enjoyed The Hawthorne Legacy far more than I did. Oh, that’s a sentence that needs unpacking, doesn’t it? If there is one thing I can say above all else, it is that I enjoy this world created by Barnes.

The trouble is that this sequel didn’t capture me the same way the story of a lost teenager trapped by a game set up by a stranger who is dead and buried. The first novel had secrets to be uncovered on every page. In more ways than one, The Hawthorne Legacy fell back on teenage drama, for which I could say Emily Laughlin contributed more than enough of that last time. With a tangled love triangle, Max becoming more prevalent, and generally an antagonistic point of view taken whenever there is an adult in the room, I know it is not something aimed at me. That is what shocked me about enjoying the first book.

I made one of my positives from the review exactly what Max brought to the forefront of a young-adult novel, teenagers swearing without actually faxing well doing it. I loved that as a tool the writer could use, but once it became a foreground matter, popping up more and more, I began wanting her just to slip once or twice. Though, frequently I didn’t find her as much of a welcome addition this time around overall. Her presence was more of a distraction from what little mystery there is this time around. Then again, I don’t think I liked anyone that was either added made a more prominent appearance other than the hermit.

There was one moment that made me stop and say, “I know the people who wrote this and edited this,” because it screamed someone at least 27 and older writing 17-year-olds in the late 2010s. I know I’m not the target audience, but the book is written from the perspective of 17-year-old Avery, who says, “While you and Jameson were playing WWF.” A name that has not applied to wrestling since 2002, Xander made millions from cryptocurrency, and their ages make the F so much more apparent than it should be. That’s a specific thing to notice, but if you aim the book at 12-16-year-olds now, I’d guess even they would look it up.

I’ll try to tread lightly here, but this is the closest I’ll get to spoilers for the end of The Hawthorne Legacy. The supposed “reveal” like it was an episode of Scooby-Doo of who did the bad things this time around felt more out of the blue than assassination attempt in The Inheritance Games. In book 1, you could see the events as they were unfolding. You were tracking it logically and still being satisfied with the outcome. Here, I could track back to know what happened after the reveal, but the point of a mystery is for you as a reader/viewer/listener to keep up with events as they happen. I’d argue there weren’t enough clues ahead of time for me as the reader to say, “I knew it!” in the lead-up.

Conclusively, I wasn’t yearning for the next book after finishing The Hawthorne Legacy as I was after The Inheritance Games. In fact, I’d suppose the ending felt flavorless and like there was nowhere to go. It was very much a situation of “And so our intrepid adventurer goes off, sad and into the sunset.” It left enough room to return the characters for the third adventure around Hawthorne House and more attempts to swindle Avery while she’s being romanced by dreamy fantasy heirs. It is a solid installment that may falter in places but generally holds up, though I don’t see where we go from here for The Final Gambit, coming (currently) mid-2022.

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The Hawthorne Legacy

$10.99+

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Such a inviting and warm world.
• Enjoyable characters to be around.
• Continues to be a page-turner.

Cons

• A reliance on teen-drama.
• A lack of fact-checking when referencing reality.
• The big reveal falls out of nowhere.