The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (2020) – BR00280 (2025) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
July 1 2025

Plot or Premise

A young woman struggling to make her rent is informed that a billionaire she has never met has left her everything, including all the drama of his extended family.

What I Liked

With a feeling like Harry getting invited to Hogwarts, the book opens with Avery being notified that she’s in the will of one Tobias Hawthorne, philanthropist billionaire, deceased. She is summoned to the reading of the will in Texas, which, after some mild disbursements, leaves the vast majority to her. Hawthorne’s stipulation is a little bit like Brewster’s Millions — she gets the initial award, but to keep it, she has to live in the Hawthorne House with the extended family for one year, including four handsome grandsons.

Within days of the will, various members of the family start drawing their battlelines, and the grandsons and Avery start to play “Riddle Me This” with clues from Hawthorne to potentially other outcomes of the will. Of course, the biggest question for Avery is “why her?”, but it takes a while for that to be revealed (and it DOES make sense, once you get there).

The smaller storyline revolves around the fight for the money and influence that the people around her start to engage in, while the bigger story is the riddle and clues that Grandpa Hawthorne left behind. As I mentioned, the feel for the story is 1/3 Harry Potter with Avery entering a world that she could never even conceive of previously; 1/3 Brewster’s Millions i.e., you have to perform to get the full inheritance; and 1/3 Ready Player One where her and the four boys try to figure out the clues hidden around the grounds.

What I Didn’t Like

There’s drama with people from her old life that doesn’t work, but overall, it isn’t enough to detract too much. Although it is part of a series, the end of Book 1 feels like it really should have just ended there. Instead, it’s almost cliff-hanger-ish, as they start figuring out that there is still a Round 2 of the Inheritance Games.

The Bottom Line

A brilliant opening with a great vibe all through the book