Nestled in the blue ridged mountains of North Carolina, the Ashby house has held tightly to dark secrets. Cam had always vowed to never go back to that property and his estranged family. But after the passing of his Uncle, he and his wife Jules travel back to the past where it unleashes the savageries of his family. Written in three perspectives, Cam, Jules and his deceased mother, the notorious Ruby MC Tavish, Rachel Hawkins weaves a page turning tale of privilege, deceit and murder. Brilliant and smart.

THIS BOOK. I love a Rachel Hawkins heroine, but man. This book. Every character is great. Every twist is fantastic (even when you see one coming, its so satisfying when the reveal happens). The setting is perfect for a story of rich, awful people. Every single thing hit perfectly. I could not put it down.

This was a fast paced story about the lives of the rich and protected of Ashby house in Tavistock North Carolina. The story starts in a boring rental in California with hard working and worn down Jules and Camden. Jules comes home from work one day to find her husband upset because his family has contacted him and wants him to come home to face his responsibilities. Jules encourages him to go home to his rich family estate that he owns and controls and is very eager to convince him to stay there and begin living a life of comfort, but she doesn’t realize what going back home might cost them all. This book was filled with so many delicious twists, turns, and surprises that kept me turning the pages faster and faster. The story is told from Camden, and Jules perspectives, as well as his late mother Ruby McTavish, through letters she left behind. This was a very interesting read, a look at what goes on in rich families, how they are protected, and what people can become when they grow bored from having no responsibilities or consequences for their actions. This was my first book by this author but now I want to go get all their previous books! I received an ARC, and this is my honest review.

ARC REVIEW

The Heiress
BY Rachel Hawkins

Publishing date: 1/9/24

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

I was super excited to read this one because the good reads ratings were over 4 stars! But this one fell into the "leanna disagrees with the masses" category. Was it bad? No not at all! But TO ME it was predictable.  I was able to put the clues together which meant I wasn't shocked when things were revealed.

3 stars for me means, it was okay but you might love it! Don't let me deter you from reading, we all have different palettes!

PS ...it has decently short chapters! 👍

Thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the arc! Always appreciative!

Loved this book. Also worth noting.. that cover! Beautiful. I was totally engrossed in this book and could not put it down. Recommended to anyone who wants a twisty thriller.

The Heiress

Rachel Hawkins

This book was different. I’ve read other books by this same author that I enjoyed but this one fell a bit flat.

It was interesting but nothing outstanding. The amount of unnecessary deaths didn’t seem to fit. I did enjoy the relationship between Cam and Jules. However, how the hell dis they get a happy ending?

It was ok, just not my personal fav.

Thank you Netgally for allowing me to review this book prior to the publish date.

✭ ✭ / 5


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⭐️Book Review⭐️ The Heiress

Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for the #AdvanceReviewCopy

Release Date: January 2024
Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Summary: Ruby McTavish comes from a wealthy family and is the heiress to the family estate and fortune. She’s well know by her own right having been married 4 times and experiencing all 4 husbands dying while under her watch. Coincidence or something more sinister?

10 years after her own death, her son, Cam and his wife Jules, return to the family home to face his unloving relatives who believe Cam should not have inherited the family fortune. What will it take to reverse the will that leaves Cam everything and win back what the family feels should be theirs by birthrights?

My Thoughts: This was fantastic! The characterization, plot twists, and the suspense all made this one a great read! A bit of a slow burn but it worked so well. With several narrators, including part of the story delivered epistolary, we gained insight into the ugly past that ultimately shaped the characters’ futures. The vivid and wild descriptions of the house and property brought the place to life, almost as if Ashby House was a character and I loved that.

Containing themes of dark family secrets, inheritance, and murder this one packs a punch.

I think this is my favourite from this author!

If you enjoy a book with lots of family history, secrets, and several conniving characters, this one is for you!

Five stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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#bookreview

My God, I cannot wait for this to hit shelves so I can publicly scream about it on all my socials. My favorite book by Rachel yet!

This was definitely a page turner. I am never disappointed in the author's books. And I love an ending that continued to unravel itself. Good winter vibes!

Thank you Netgalley and St Martin's Press for allowing me to read an advanced copy of The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins.

This story is about the McTavishes, a rich family who lives in the Ashby House high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Ruby McTavish has had a checkered past from being lost in the woods when she was a child to being mysteriously widowed to four men. She passes away and leaves the family's house and money to her son Camden McTavish. However, Camden wants nothing to do with the McTavishes or the inheritance. He moves far away and lives in an apartment with his wife making low wages. Ten years later, Camden's uncle passes away and he is summoned back to the house. He reluctantly goes back and takes his wife with him to sort things out.

The POVs of the story are Camden and his wife, Jules. In between the Camden and Jules chapters you get multimedia of news reports, magazine articles, and letters from Ruby explaining her notorious past. The McTavishes minus Camden are all awful greedy people who care about nothing but their own personal agendas to obtain the house and the money. And although Ruby was a dark character, I still rooted for her at times. People who just read general fiction or are getting into thrillers should start with Rachel Hawkins books. She's great at storytelling and character-building before the ending blows everything apart.

One thing I noticed while reading was the idea of an older woman writing about her husbands. Mix that in with the glimpse of the woman in the green dress on the book cover and the description of Ruby wearing the green dress gave me full Evelyn Hugo vibes. I'm not sure if this story was inspired by Evelyn Hugo but it feels like a small piece of it was. So if you like Evelyn Hugo and thrillers, this story could be for you! That aside, the story overall was a good one and I enjoyed the journey with the reveals along the way.

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Gothic romances have a few things in common that readers expect and return to the genre again and again to find. Rachel Hawkins understands this, and delivers in full with The Heiress. A happy couple, haunted by the past that they’ve run all the way to the Colorado Mountains to escape, a family mystery that sent them back, and a gorgeous southern manor filled with dysfunctional family. A perfect kind of mystery you won’t want to put down. Delighted to recommend this to my mystery and gothic loving friends. Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. The book releases on January 9, 2024. Happy New Year reading!

3.5 stars rounded up. This book started out slow and kind of confusing. I had to keep going back to remember who was who. Around halfway, it picked up and started becoming a lot clearer. The format between present day, letters from Ruby, and articles kept me engaged. While I did figure a good chunk of the twists out before they were revealed, I still enjoyed the reveals and the twists I didn't expect had me intrigued. I liked this one but it wasn't my favorite by Rachel Hawkins.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for this e-ARC. This was such a fun read! It’s definitely a slow burn. So much build up and backstory before a a really great full throttle ending. And I’m not saying the backstory stuff was boring at all. It was very intriguing trying to figure out what all of these clues were trying to tell us. The last 30% of the book was very fast paced and I initially was going to stop reading at like 70% but I just couldn’t. I needed to know what was going to happen! If you like rich people, family drama you will love this! 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Rachel Hawkins is a very good storyteller! Jules and Camden, married for ten years, move from Colorado to Camden’s inherited family mansion, Ashby House, in North Carolina. The story is easily told from different perspectives and different timelines, with lots of satisfying twists and turns. I really like this author and I look forward to reading more. Recommended!

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of The Heiress in exchange for my honest review. I normally really love Rachel Hawkins' thrillers but this one was a bit disappointing. I thought the overall plot was compelling but ultimately fell flat for me. The main plot line about Ruby's kidknapping was never really addressed/answered and a lot of the "twists" were quite predictable for me.

Rachel Hawkins' books keep getting better. The Heiress might be my favorite of hers yet. I know I said that about the last one but this one really hit all the marks. I'm a sucker for a book with old world, southern charm and family dynamics. I love flawed characters when there is redemption of some sort that comes into play. I'm not super sure that anything about The McTavish's was redemptive but the plot was juicy from the beginning. It was a bit of a slow burn but it didn't drag. I felt like Hansel and Gretel with the breadcrumbs gobbling up each one waiting for the next secret to be revealed. The ending answered questions I didn't even know I had. I, however, have one complaint and it's been my complaint with each of Hawkins' books is the excessive swearing. It honestly isn't needed and brings the writing down in my opinion. In this case, the way in which it was incorporated was smartly done but it still could have been left out and it would have taken nothing from the book. I know that I'm not the only one with this criticism and it did kind of seem like it was done on purpose this book as a bit of a screw you to critics lol but whatever, author's prerogative and all that. Regardless, I couldn't put the book down and when I did, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

•The Heiress (ARC)💰•

📚Genre: domestic thriller
🤔Rating: 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺(5/5)
#️⃣ of pages: 304
👯‍♀️ read if you like: family dramas, unreliable narrators, fast paced books, Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
⚠️TW: suicide, abuse
📆Publishing Date- January 9, 2024

👍🏼:
•loved that the twists kept coming the whole book, even up until the end!
•we love multiple POVs, especially when one is from a series of letters from someone already gone 🤫
•short chapters make this one easy to fly through

👎🏼:
•nothing negative to say!

Overall…
TBH, after The Wife Upstairs, I haven’t *loved* the other books released by Hawkins…until this one. I think this thriller was an excellent return for her & gives all the twisty, page turning elements that TWU gives. The narrators are all extremely unreliable and the twists continue to come the more you read. I predicted a couple of them but it was still so well-written that I couldn’t put it down. Really, really enjoyed this one!

Thank you @netfalley and st Martins press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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Over 20% into the book and I’m bored to death. Can’t continue with this one after talking with others who’ve read it!

The Heiress by Racheal Hawkins– A family drama that has so much suspense this book was well played right to the end.

Thank you NetGalley for another amazing read.

Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore, aka “Mrs. Killmore” certainly left her mark. Married and widowed four times over, the press had a field day with her reputation, but money has a way of insulating people, and Ruby had a lot of it.

Camden swore he would never come back Ashby House; he was going to find his own way in the world. The “house” which is more of a large estate that also comes with half of the town of Tavistock and a nine figure fortune belongs to him, but he doesn’t want anything to do with it. When family calls insisting he come and release money to fix things around the estate “the prodigal son returns”. His homecoming is exactly as he expects, and he tries to warn his wife Jules of his poorly behaved family that resents him. Camden was adopted by Ruby, therefore his aunt and cousins, who reside in the home consider him an interloper at best and a downright thief at worst.

As Jules and Cam stay to work on the estate, Ashby House slowly releases her secrets. And man does she have more than a few. This novel is so hard to describe without giving away Rachel Hawkin’s brilliantly woven twists throughout the plot. The Heiress is a book to be devoured in one sitting, and will have the reader guessing until the very end. This is Hawkins’ best work yet!

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and the author Rachel Hawkins for the advanced copy of the book. The Heiress is out January 9th. All opinions are my own.