“The Inheritance Games” by Jennifer Lynn Barnes follows Avery Grambs, a struggling orphaned girl with a plan to work extremely hard to get into a good school and leave her unfortunate life in her rearview. However, when Billionaire Tobias Hawthorne leaves his fortune to Avery in his will, it seems like all of her problems could disappear. Like most things in life, there’s a catch – Avery has never met him and has no link to him at all. This causes his family to believe she has conned him while in a fragile state.

Could there be anything worse than being painted as a con artist? To answer that: yes there could, and it comes on a piece of a paper – a list of requirements that she must complete before being able to inherit the fortune. The first one is that Avery must spend at least one whole year in the Hawthorne house, the family manor. The second is that she must allow Tobias’s family, whom he just disowned, to live there with her. So, you can imagine the level of awkwardness, and perhaps even danger, that comes from all directions.

Hawthorne House is a mansion that contains secret passageways and riddles along with many secrets about the Hawthorne family. The longer Avery stays there, the more she starts to realize that the will, the letter she received and the letters Hawthorne’s grandsons received are all linked. They are clues to Tobias Hawthorne’s last game.

Tobias has four grandsons who have grown up playing his games and solving riddles. The caretaker Nash, stone-cold Grayson, daredevil Jameson and charismatic Xander. With all four brothers trying to figure out the riddle, Avery realizes she is in very deep waters. With no one to trust, Avery must solve the mystery before it’s too late.

I honestly was not expecting what I got in this book. This was a recommendation, and it kind of seemed like it was going to be a fantasy story. Little did I know, I was very wrong. If you’ve ever played the game Clue, it is very similar, just a lot more fast-paced and with a lot of jaw-dropping plot twists. I found myself unable to put the book down because I was dying to know the answer. And as you figure out more answers, double the amount of questions seem to come from them. Even when you figure out the answer to the whole mystery, there are more unanswered questions that lead into the next book. I love when authors leave you wanting so much more that you are dying to buy the next book, and that is exactly what Jennifer Barnes did with this book.

I have never been big on riddles and games because they take too long — and I do not have the best patience. Thankfully, this book had constant twists and turns along the way that kept my interest peaked. It gave enough answers to keep you wanting more instead of giving nothing until the end, which I have experienced before.

I also do love when there is a little romance involved, and Avery happens to have herself intertwined in a romance with more than one of the Hawthorne grandsons. I love a good love triangle, and I think Barnes has set up the makings for a really good one.

I highly recommend this read if you enjoy being on the edge of your seat with extremely high stakes and bits of slow-burn romance mixed in.