The Heiress is an engaging and enjoyable mystery for which the often-cliched phrases “ I couldn’t put it down” and “ the plot twists make me anxious to read it again” for once ring true. The surprising twists took me right to the edge of feeling cheated but the skillful writing never crossed that line. The self-centered, self-important, dysfunctional family faced with mysterious deaths reminded me of Knives Out, the manner in which the interesting back stories of Ruby’s husbands were revealed reminded my favorably of The Seven Wives of Evelyn Hugo and Cameron’s story of a poor orphan “rescued” by an eccentric, wealthy benefactor had hints of Great Expectations for me. This one is definitely worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me an advance copy in exchange for my impartial review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy of Rachel Hawkins’ newest thriller.
Just when you think you’ve figured out the mystery at the heart of this story, there’s another twist. This is my favorite kind of story: one where I’m kept guessing until the very end.
This story is told from alternating perspectives between Camden, his wife Jules, and letters from Ruby, the intriguing and mysterious central character. Reading Ruby’s letters gave me Evelyn Hugo vibes, another story I loved.
This may be Hawkins’ best work yet.

Ten years ago, the enigmatic yet notorious widow (times four), Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore, died at her palatial mansion in Tavistock, North Carolina. Kidnapped at the young age of three, her life had been one mixed with intrigue and heartbreak. Unless the rumors and gossip were to be believed. Could it be possible that one of the richest women in the Blue Ridge Mountains was actually a murderess? Surely some mysteries just might be too scandalous to be true.

When Ruby died, however, the money—rumored to be in the high eight figures—passed down to her adopted son, Camden. But sick of the McTavishes and their spoiled ways, he decided to walk away from the money and his surviving family members to forge his own way out west. There he met the down-on-her-luck Jules who he quickly fell head over heels for. The two married and settled down far from the McTavishes and their greedy ways.

Ten years later, Camden is living a happy if not spartan life in Colorado with Jules. Until he learns of his Uncle Howell’s passing, that is. Once again, the McTavishes aim to pull him—and his rather large bank account—back into the fold. Taken by the idea of a twenty thousand square foot home in the mountains of North Carolina, Jules convinces him to visit the grand estate once more. After all, there’s always been a piece of him that seemed out of reach. Maybe visiting his past will release the ghosts that seem to follow him even now.

Setting foot on the grounds, Jules is overcome with Ashby House and its breathtaking vistas. Once inside, however, the McTavishes are hardly welcoming and she starts to see why Camden ran away all those years ago. Even more worrisome are the rumors about the former matriarch that still haunt its halls. Was Ruby’s abduction and eventually return really as straightforward as everyone claimed? Did her four husbands truly die by accidental or natural causes? Or could the rumors about “Mrs. Kill-more” actually be true? Most puzzling of all, why did the widow adopt Camden out of the blue? One thing is for sure, however. Now that Camden is back within Ashby House’s walls, leaving won’t be nearly as easy as it was the first time around.

Holy guacamole! I always knew that Rachel Hawkins was the queen of suspense, but, after finishing The Heiress, I was stunned into silence by what I’d just read. Deftly combining dual POVs, letters, and various news articles into one twisted, twisted tale, I was totally floored. Let me just tell you, Hawkins has reached a new level of awe-inspiring writing, in my opinion, with this domestic thriller being a downright masterpiece of the written word.

Starting from the top, the characters were simply sublime. Mildly eccentric in an Agatha Christie-esque way, they still felt wholly believable to this avid reader. With dark motives and equally disturbing behaviors, every twist and turn revealed a new secret waiting to be exposed. And while none of the characters were exactly innocent (and quite a few rather unlikeable), I still connected with one or two, which made me hope they came out on top. Just the same, my loyalties flip-flopped throughout the richly layered plot until its stunning conclusion managed to shock even this veteran thriller lover.

The plot itself was oh so devious, but only in the best possible way. With all of the various revelations about both the past and the present, it was impossible to see where it was all heading before the immaculate twists were laid bare. Just the same, the ever ratcheting suspense and foreboding meant my fingers simply flew through the pages while I lost track of time. Quite frankly, this just might be Hawkins’s best novel yet as I was thoroughly addicted to these characters and their altogether crazy antics.

With short chapters, a puzzle of a plot, and a brilliant gothic mystery at its core, I was thoroughly spellbound by this fast-paced winner of a book. Of course, I mustn’t forget about the dysfunctional family and perfectly drawn setting as I continue to rave about this hole in one. Just know that you shouldn’t trust ANYONE in what was a devilish, unputdownable good time. Now I’m just going to cross my fingers and pray that The Heiress makes its way onto a screen near me someday soon. Perfect for adaptation, I’d wager it would be a sellout for sure. So if you haven’t already, be sure to add this book to your 2024 TBR ASAP. After all, it’s not one to be missed. Rating of 5+ stars.

I always enjoy Rachel Hawkins and this one may actually be my new favorite. I listened to the audiobook for most of this one (until the end and I just couldn’t wait anymore) and I think it greatly added to my enjoyment and probably bumped this from a 4 to 5 star for me so highly recommend listening to the audiobook. The narrators did an amazing job bringing their characters to life and the story was so much more dynamic when they read it. The book really looks at the age old questions is money the root of all evil, and based on the characters we meet here the answer just may be yes. The story is told from the perspective of Camden, adopted son and unwilling heir to his entire adopted family’s fortune, Jules Camden’s wife with a great desire to help him regain his legacy, letters from Ruby Camden’s adopted mother, and newspaper articles. Camden hasn’t looked back since he left Ashby, but when he gets an email from his cousin reminding him of responsibilities he and Jules decide a visit couldn’t hurt. But there is lots of things that hurt hiding in the past. Will the secrets of Ashby house destroy them or set them free?

Thank you @stmartinspress for my gifted eArc. My thoughts are my own.

This is a fun thriller read and, as an added bonus for me, it takes place about an hour away from my home, in the North Carolina mountains!

Told through newspaper article excerpts, letters from beyond the grave, and the alternating perspectives of Jules and Camden, this story kept my rapt attention from the beginning!

Ruby makes for quite the colorful character! The daughter of wealthy parents, she was kidnapped as a young child and then later returned to her parents. She was married four times, and each husband died under mysterious circumstances! Hmmm…

When Ruby dies, she leaves her estate and all of her money to her adopted son, Camden. The problem, Ruby’s resentful relatives still live in the mansion, and they are not happy when Cam returns to the estate with his young, idealistic wife, Jules.

I loved the building tension and the family drama in this one! The hatred and jealousy is real! The setting, a rambling old mansion, is perfect! I enjoyed the story so much I wanted it to continue on past the conclusion!

Read this if love books with:
Family Drama
Tension
Old Secrets
Colorful Characters
Old Family Mansions
Murder

This book gives truth to nothing is as it seems. Do we ever really know someone or their motives?! Even if it’s our own “family”. I really enjoyed the multiple POVs and little bits of time jumps with back story in the forms of letters and news articles. Thanks to Rachel Hawkins, St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the chance to read before publication.

This is my first book by author Rachel Hawkins, but it will not be my last. This mysterious, suspenseful story was a winner for me. I read it in a couple of days because I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. I liked the dual timeline and the use of newspaper clippings to tell the story. This was a very engrossing mystery with lots of twists and turns. Loved it!
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book.

The Heiress was a must request after reading Rachel Hawkin’s The Villa last year and I can easily say I was not disappointed. I’m talking back to back to back plot twist all the way to the very end of this one and my brain was still turning this story around long after I read the epilogue. The multi perspective chapters were beneficial in keeping this twisted tale plot on track. The tale of a rich family with dark secrets that seem to never end. Much of the storyline talks of Ruby and her upbringing in a rich family after a tragic accident. After recounting Ruby’s history, Camden, Ruby’s adopted son and his wife Jules return to Ruby’s family home, Ashby House. In the house lies more secrets that were unaccounted for. An overall great and quick read with lots of problem solving.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Infamous heiress Ruby McTavish was the owner of Ashby House in North Carolina. When she died, she left it all to Camden, her adopted son. Ruby had survived all of her four husbands, each dying mysteriously. Yet the most intriguing part of Ruby's life was that she survived a kidnapping as a child. Ten years after Ruby's death, Camden is happily married to Jules and has stayed away from Ashby House. He has not spent any of his inheritance on himself. But Ashby House, where his aunt and cousins live, is in need of repair and Cam is asked to come home to review Ruby's will and help address the house's condition. Jules, who is privately pretty excited that they are owners of a grand estate, encourages a visit to Ashby House. She is hopeful that they might end up living there. But she's in for a bit of an awakening. Between dealing with the deteriorating house and Cam's dreadful relatives, Ruby's true story starts to emerge.

In The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins has created the ideal gothic setting for her latest mystery thriller. The story is told from Cam and Jules' points of view and through a series of amusing letters written by Ruby, which provide details on her life, including her multiple marriages. It's a clever and twisty tale where the surprises keep coming. A fast-paced, satisfying read to kick off the new year.

I really enjoyed The Heiress. The characters were well developed, the story had a few twists, and the ending left the reader satisfied. I couldn't tell if I liked Ruby or felt sorry for her, but I did like her adopted son Camden and his wife Jules. It's hard to review this book without giving away any spoilers but buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for the ARC #TheHeiress by #RachelHawkins. This book is amazing from start to finish. I love all the drama and the amazing plot twist. So many things I didn’t see coming and the dofferent relationships. Highly recommend.

I support women's rights. But more importantly, I support women's wrongs. Like Rachel Hawkins' other books, there are plenty of those to choose from and a handful of trash men get their comeuppance.

The McTavishs have lorded over the small town of Tavistock for decades, haunting their ancestral home, Ashby House, from above the hamlet. Having made their money generations ago, they, like many old money families of literature, spend their time being petty and cruel to all of those around them, whether they be family or not.

Camden McTavish thinks he's escaped the swirling malaise of his family. The adopted son of Ruby McTavish, the potentially murderous heiress the book is named for, he fled to California and then Colorado. Along with his wife, Jules, he's carved out a quiet life without the McTavish fortune or misfortune.

But when a series of emails calls him back to Ashby House, he has to untangle what haunts his past while grappling with the remaining family.

While I've chosen to focus on Cam in my recap, the story is alternately told by Jules, Ruby, and newspaper/magazine clips that trace the sordid family history. The book very much borrows from characteristics of Southern Gothic literature. No one is good in this book, though there are varying levels of depravity on display. There's no one you can ultimately root for, though throughout the book you'll shift your allegiances. The setting and the house feel oppressive, and you wonder if it is truly supernatural or simply the darkness of excessive wealth matched with excessive time that leads the family to spiral.

Ultimately, I flew through this once I got started, though I think the plot spikes earlier in the third act than ideal, with the end of the book feeling rushed and slightly unsatisfying. Sometimes that's great, it creates a sort of frantic panic for the reader. In this case, however, it felt like those threads were being tied up too conveniently and too quickly.

I ultimately read an ARC, so it wasn't in its final format. However, I would have loved to have a family tree to look back at in the earlier parts of the book, because the deep web of the McTavish family isn't easy to grasp unless you are really paying attention.

* Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. *

If you have a taste for modern gothic horror and have ever fantasized about living at Biltmore, this is the book for you. It hits all the right beats for the genre, with secrets twisting upon secrets. I found myself asking in fascination - how terrible are these people going to get?

Wellllllllll shit! This was the perfect read to wrap up my 2023 list. After reading "The Villa" earlier this year, and becoming engrossed in the 1970s story of Mari and Lara, I mentally bookmarked Rachel Hawkins as an author to pay attention to. I love a gothic setting and this book was a perfect escape into my own little world. While I physically dodged zombie Christmas mall shoppers, mentally I was sitting beside Jules, sipping a cup of coffee from an Adirondack chair overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Things I Loved:

1. The pacing + the details. I love how the story unfolded as the chapters flipped between present day with Cam + Jules along with the rest of the horrific McTavish clan, the letters by Ruby, where she reveals her past and the newspaper articles about Ruby's kidnapping and life events. The story is unraveled in such a delicious way with enough foreshadowing (if one pays attentions to the smallest details) to clue you in to what's to come. And yet...those details! Heart eyes! You might think you can guess what's happening here. I know I did. And yes, some of my guesses came true. But I did not expect 75% of what occurred. And reading enough thrillers, finding one that surprises me is always a treat.

2. The exploration of meaning of family, heritage, and inheritance. The psychology of people is endlessly fascinating to me that, in another life, I'd have done quite well to be able to watch people react to any number of situations. (Lol, I do that now,) Families are particularly interesting to me because of the closeness, we often know our family members better than ourselves. Certainly well enough to know which buttons to press, causing both meltdowns + system malfunctions. For the McTavish clan of Tavistock, NC, the heritage of their name is everything. When an estate and a nine-figure fortune is in question, who is entitled to the legacy? What, exactly, makes a family? Is it blood alone or can it be found + built? Is nature more important than nurture or is it vice versa? Hawkins' manages to build layers upon layers with the McTavish family in a compact amount of time and soon enough, the years of regrets + frustrations, jealousies + competitions come to a hideous pustulating boil.

3. The ending. Much like The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, this one left me positively gobsmacked and I had to rewind several times to make sure I heard it correctly.

Absolutely recommend! Many, many thanks to Net Galley for an ALC!

This is by far my favorite of this authors work so far. Filled with family drama, sinister twists and enough suspense to keep me engrossed until the last page.

This is now the fourth book that I have read by this author. I would say that it is probably my favorite. The story follows the life of a husband and wife who live out in Colorado. With the recent passing of a family member, the husband can no longer push off going home to deal with family matters that he would have liked to avoid forever. Now he must face the past and everything that has led to this moment.

This story is told through a few different viewpoints, and I felt like that really helped keep me engaged. Especially when it was the letters that we were reading. This book had some twists and turns that I hadn't expected, but found to really enjoy. If you have liked any of the author's other books, I think you would enjoy this one too. It was a very quick read.

Rachel has done it again. I wasn’t sure how I’d like this book given the premise of it but as the story continued and the plot got more sinister I wasn’t sure how there would be a “good ending” to it at all. The family drama, the drama that unfolded from Ruby stories. It was unreal how quickly I got engulfed in the book and I couldn’t wait to hear the next secret that Ruby decided to unearth.

The Heiress, by Rachel Hawkins, is my favorite of her novels, to date. Told from various perspectives, including letters and published articles, each a distinctive voice, the reader is drawn in from the first page and not released until the final paragraph.

Ruby McTavish, the daughter of a very rich family, disappeared from the family estate in the mountains of North Carolina, when she was three. Miraculously, she was returned eight months later and went on to lead quite a wild life. Eventually she adopts her son Camden, who leaves the McTavish mansion in his early 20’s, soon after marrying Jules.

I really enjoyed how the story unfolded through the different perspectives, each one moving this fast-paced novel forward and with a good twist.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this digital ARC.

The Heiress is a bingeable popcorn thriller set in the glided world of dark family secrets and heavy burdens. When the notoriously rich heiress of the McTavish family dies, the remaining family members grumble when they realize the fortune is left only to her adoptive son, Camden, who wants nothing to do with the family or the money. A decade after her death, Cam is called back to the family estate following the death of his uncle only this time he’s not alone, he brings his wife Jules and together they take on the remaining family members. What ensues upon their arrival is hardly a welcoming committee but anger and a vindictive plan to see him removed from the family once and for all.

I had a feeling what was going to happen and what the twists were from the beginning but it didn’t stop me from being invested in the story and reading it. I got major Evelyn Hugo vibes from Ruby with the number of husbands she had and the air she carried herself with. Cam is just a regular guy trying to distance himself from his past and you totally get it when you met his estranged family. I liked Jules and I knew she was hiding something but honestly not that surprised when you realize the connection between her and Cam.

I really enjoyed this read so if you are looking for a quick reading thriller definitely pick up this book.


Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest feedback

I really liked this book, it was different than anything else I've read which was a breath of fresh air. I will be recommending this to my friends, and auto buy this author!