I was excited to see a new Rachel Hawkins book available and while it took me a long time to get into it once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. I saw some of the twists coming but this did not take away from my enjoyment. That being said I really struggle with the rating of this between 3 and 4 stars because of how long it did take me to get into it. Ultimately I went with 4 but it is probably closer to a 3.5.

This was a very fun read, I always find Hawkins’s books to be instantly entertaining. Atmospheric and spooky, Ashby House is an amazing setting for a twisted family thriller. The format of the book was also unique and engaging. The POVs swapped between the two MCs while some chapters were in written letter format from the late heiress herself. Other snippets were framed as articles from interviews, news columns, newspapers and blogs. I would say my least favorite thing about this book would just be how completely unbelievable all the chaos is - I mean this family has a lot of murder going on. But with suspension of disbelief, it’s a fun ride with good twists and fun characters that you love to hate.

4.5- Very clever, very unique, very unexpected! I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling in this novel as it was creative and “out of the box”. The plot unfolds via the points of view of several characters (one from beyond the grave), letters, and old news articles. While the storyline unraveled slowly, I felt that it was artfully done, revealing just enough pieces of the puzzle at a time to keep you wanting to read on without feeling bored. The author made you care what happened to characters who, theoretically, should be extremely unlikeable. I appreciated the sense of humor, particularly during Jules’ narrative and dialogue. The plot kept twisting in unexpected directions, and, just when you thought all was revealed, “but wait, there’s more!”

I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Rachel Hawkins for this free ARC digital copy.

This is Hawkins best one yet! I couldn’t put this one down, really enjoyed it! The characters were absolutely addicting. If you have enjoyed this author’s other stories, you will be rocked by this one!

Gothic setting and extreme wealth, how can you go wrong? Rachel Hawkins kept me up turning pages as the story kept ramping up to a satisfying conclusion. Twisty and suspenseful, Loved it, I can picture someone reading this from a comfy chair, late at night, cup of tea beside them, with a blizzard raging outside . Well done!

The Heiress, by Rachel Hawkins, is the type of mystery that will keep you guessing from the first page and scratching your head long after the last. Ms. Hawkins is an expert at suspenseful storytelling that never crosses the line into creepiness nor gore, and for that I am grateful. The story follows an extravagantly wealthy family in the North Carolina mountains and the strange happenings within their ancestral mansion and their lives. Throughout, and quite honestly until the last page, secrets are revealed leading the reader to think twice before trusting anyone. I highly encourage mystery fans, and non-mystery fans, to check out Ms. Hawkins and most especially The Heiress.

An intriguingly dark family mystery. Thank you for the ARC.
Murder, manipulative wealth and many, many secrets, familial obligations and guilt spread generously, all to create an insulated world where wealth controls everything. Or does it?. All these entwined together wrap up Hawkins' newest novel, a fabulous mystery that kept me reading and guessing about all the characters right until the very end!!

Ruby McTavish, an heiress, is North Carolina royalty. Her colorful life includes multiple husbands, endless conflict with her resentful relatives, and a kidnapping episode that will shape her legacy - and her relationship with her own heir (Camden) - in dramatic ways.

A thrilling story of old money, family strife, and murder, spanning multiple generations! Hawkins delivers twist after twist, even on the final page.

5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was my first book to read by this author, but it won’t be my last.

I absolutely loved this book! Rachel Hawkins has a way of making you feel like you know her characters.
Hang on to your seat while you follow Camden and Jules as they travel back to Camden’s childhood home after getting everything from his dead mother. Told thru both of their viewpoints and as well as letters written from ruby, camdens mother, and the heir to the McTavish fortune.
There is so much murder, suspense, and mystery.
You’ll be left in total shock when you discover what is going on, up until the last page.

A convoluted plot that dragged on and then everything happens all at once. The different storytelling from Cam’s viewpoint, to Jule’s viewpoint, to letters from Ruby, to article snippets, it’s too much. There has to be a better way to tell a story than having to rely on TELLING your readers info, instead of showing them. Also, the word “darling” was overused at a whopping 33 times. There really wasn’t one character that was the most interesting and I didn’t really feel for any of them, not even Cam. It had some predictable twists and now that I think of it… what even was the point of all the husbands deaths? Anyways, a miss for me.

This book was awesome !
I have never read another book with so many twists and turns.
Rachel Hawkins keeps you hanging until the very end to piece everything together.
Many of the characters have their own skeletons in the closet, so to speak, which eventually all comes out as you get closer to the end.
Great read and I will give this a five star rating!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eARC of The Heiress in exchange for my honest review!

This was quite the riveting Gothic thriller to dive into! I'd expected that, having previously enjoyed Rachel Hawkins's The Villa, which also pulled me in with its own Gothic mood. For The Heiress specifically, it not only boasts a grimly lush tone and setting, but it enthralls me with its characters, particularly Ruby. Hawkins does an excellent job at fleshing her out into a complex individual who elicits a mixture of fear and sympathy from me. This is why I usually preferred the flashbacks, which is where we got the time with Ruby, over the present-day timeline, though that doesn't detract from the story we get in the present. The other characters make for an absorbing group that adds onto the morally gray meat of the narrative and displays the corruption and greed that festers within the wealthy and the powerful. And when the ending arrived, I was quite happy with how things wrapped up.

Overall, I'm officially rating The Heiress 4.25 out of 5 stars, which I'm rounding down to 4 stars on Goodreads. Now that I've had a good time with two of Hawkins's books, I'm looking forward to reading even more of her work.

The Heiress was my fourth Rachel Hawkins book and easily her best yet.

It was well-paced and intriguing, which made it hard to put down. I read the whole thing within a day.

It was part mystery, part gritty familial drama, with a little thriller.

While it wasn’t quite a five-star read, I’m giving it 4.5 stars. (I gave The Wife Upstairs Reckless Girls, and The Villa all four stars.)

The setting was atmospheric, and the story was full of twists, only one of which I truly guessed ahead of time.

Most of her other books had mostly unlikeable characters. This book did have those, but it also had some more likable (albeit complicatedly so) characters, which I enjoyed.

It was dark, but not in a way that left you feeling down after you turned the last page. That can be hard for an author to do, so it’s worth noting.

My biggest issue with this book was the excessive use of f*ck, especially in the first half of the book. When used well, it can have an acceptable dramatic effect. But when it’s on nearly every page, it distracts from an otherwise well-written story. Hawkins has the vocabulary to do better than this, as evidenced by the handful of words she used that I had to look up.

I’d probably have given it five stars if it weren’t for that.

Bottom Line: If you enjoyed Knives Out and The Family Game by Catherine Steadman, you’ll enjoy this dark, twisty read.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was excited to check out Rachel Hawkin's The Heiress, hoping it would be comparable to my favourite of hers (Reckless Girls). However, I found it very hard to get through. It starts off very slow, and that pace continues until the final 1/4 of the book, where many ridiculous things begin to happen. It is a personal pet peeve of mine when letters are used as a way to clearly share information, instead of crafting a story that reveals the information in an engaging way. This one was a big miss for me, unfortunately!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, and Rachel Hawkins for this ARC and the opportunity to offer genuine feedback.

*I received an ARC from NetGalley and St Martins Press*

Rachel Hawkins knows how to write a page turner that has you guessing up until the very end. her books are unputdownable for me.

This story about a rich Appalachian heiress and black widow had me hooked the entire time. However, the ending fell a little flat to me and the twist was the first of Rachel Hawkins that I found predictable.

The Heiress is a book for fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

The Heiress follows Camden, the adopted son of Ruby McTavish who is set to inherit the McTavish family fortune. Ruby McTavish is infamously known as the woman who was kidnapped as a child and has been a widow four times over. Camden surprisingly wants nothing to do with the money, and ends up settling down as an English teacher with his wife Jules, far away from the McTavish estate, Ashby House. Years later, the news of Camden's uncle's passing brings him and his wife back to the Ashby House, reminding him exactly why he left in the first place. While Camden is eager to finish up the business quickly and return to his life, Jules is determined to claim all that Ruby has left behind for her son, revealing dark secrets about their history, fortune, and family.

This story is told through the shifting perspectives of Jules, Camden, Ruby's letters, as well as news article clippings. Ruby's narrative felt the most compelling to me, I was constantly waiting to read more of her letters and solve her mystery. I also really enjoyed the pacing of this book, Rachel Hawkins executed the perfect amount of push and pull that kept me reading into the wee hours of night, wanting to see how everything unravels. While I enjoyed that aspect, I think I was set up for failure by thinking that this book was a thriller, while it is most definitely a family drama. The book is more of a slow burn, with an overarching mystery, but not many twists and turns throughout the story, so the first half was a bit confusing for me since I was waiting for more suspense and intrigue. The second half of the story really built momentum, and the ending is what boosted my enjoyment of the book overall.

I recommend this story to fans of family dramas, with morally ambiguous characters who are always looking to get a little bit of revenge.

I want to say a quick thank you to St.Martin's Press and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Genre: Thriller/ Family Drama
Rating: ️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a solid 3.75 for me. I loved the layout of this book - past vs present. Also, a story within the story. I looooooooved Ruby and I died over the twist!

The rating is lower for me because I genuinely wasn’t into the story until the plot thickened. It was keeping my attention but I needed some more thrills.

Overall, I enjoyed this!

The one character’s name, Julianne - I like it 😉

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

Thank you to @netgalley , @stmartinspress and @ladyhawkins for the advanced digital copy of The Heiress!

They say you can always go home, but what if you really don’t want to?

Camden was once crowned the “Luckiest boy in North Carolina.” Unfortunately all that luck afforded him was adopted family with loads of money and loads of problems.

Adopted by Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore, North Carolina’s richest and most notorious resident. Ruby wasn’t exactly maternal. She had layers- an infamous kidnap victim who was eventually returned to her family, a socialite, a wife four times over with each attempt ending with the untimely demise of her husbands, a successful entrepreneur in her own right, and then a mother to Camden.

Life as a McTavish was always complicated, especially for an adopted heir. His relatives were never accepting. It was always Ruby and Camden against the world. In the aftermath of her death, Camden fled his childhood home, the iconic Ashby house, and the McTavish money. Running from his dysfunctional family and their baggage, he finds a normal existence as a high school English and a husband. He and his wife, Jules, were living a simple, but happy life.

Until Cam’s uncle passes, and they are pulled back into the family fold and all that entails at the Ashby House. Jules can’t wait to finally see the beautiful estate, but once she does, she can’t quit imagining what it might be like to be a permanent resident.

Cam has never been welcome, but now that he holds the purse strings, his relationship with his remaining family is increasingly fraught. The story really comes together with the weaving POVs of Camden, Jules, and Ruby through letters she wrote before she passed away. Secrets are what drove Camden from the Ashby house, and secrets are what pulls Jules there, but the secrets that Ruby shares can destroy them all.

This is an amazing read- my favorite Rachel Hawkins book yet. Do yourself a favor and pre-order this for January 9, 2024.

Camden McTavish never felt he fit in with his adopted family. The McTavish name is well-known in North Carolina, especially in the small town of Tavistock where the McTavish’s family estate, Ashby House, is located. Once owned by the notorious Ruby McTavish, Camden (Cam) is the heir to Ashby House as well as a large fortune after his adopted mother died peacefully in here sleep. Or so the story goes . . . Cam wants nothing to do with the McTavish’s or his inheritance and is happy living a peaceful, simple life as an English teacher with his wife, Jules. When Cam is summoned back to Ashby House after his uncle’s death, Jules encourages him to go back to his family home one last time. As Jules meets Cam’s family for the first time, she can see why he was so hesitant to return but is also enchanted by the beauty of Ashby House. Jules has future plans of her own for Ashby House and hasn’t been completely honest with Cam about her complex past. With secrets around every corner, who will end up with the ultimate prize of Ashby House?

I thought my family’s dynamic was complicated but after reading this, I see I was wrong about that! I really enjoyed this book. The story is told in alternating perspectives and timelines of Cam, Jules, and Ruby which allows you to get to know each of them. I especially enjoyed Ruby’s chapters. She is one complicated woman! This book keeps you on your toes and each character reveals secrets that you will not see coming. I can’t wait to see what Rachel Hawkins comes up with next :)

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

Ruby McTavish went missing at a young age. Heir to the McTavish fortune and widow four times over, her death leaves behind a wake of questions. Camden, Ruby's adopted son must now deal with the cleanup. Through the course of the McTavish family, things aren't always quite fair and some family members are left very mad at the cards they've been dealt.

Cam finally will return to Ashby House with his wife, Jules. Jules can see the beauty and dollar signs of the house, picturing her life there once they rid the house of the others. Not all may be as it seems. The infamous Ruby's McTavish has some secrets to share, the only question is who will she share them with?

This book was phenomenal. My new favorite Rachel Hawkins book. The story is told through Camden and Jules perspective, as well as letters written by Ruby, and news articles through the years. Ruby is such a character to begin with, are you supposed to love her or hate her? Who knows. The mystery of Ruby's disappearance is interlaced with rich people behaving badly, sneaking murderers, and unreliable narrators. If you loved the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, pick this book up immediately. I would not consider this a steadfast thriller but more of a family drama with murder.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. It was purely enjoyable to read.