I gave myself a challenge and that was to finish reading The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins before the end of 2023 so I could make sure this review got posted on time. I kinda forgot about it the whole month of December…. annnnd…. binge read it on the 31st.

I have no regrets.

This book is bonkers.

The Heiress [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] gives us all kinds of perspective from different characters. Our current timeline POVs are Jules and Camden. They are a happily married couple living in Colorado, but Cam is also the adopted son/heir of a notorious North Carolina woman. After a relative dies, they request Cam return to the estate to fix some things up, since he controls all the money, but he really doesn’t want to go back. Jules really pushes him to make the trip so she can see the mansion for herself, since they own it and everything. She hopes once Cam sees it, he’ll want to stay there and she can live out her rich girl dreams.

But, we also get a series of letters from the woman herself, Ruby McTavish. She was kidnapped as a child and located in another state several months later. Ruby returned to her family, but some people didn’t believe it was really her. Once she grew up, she had some rotten luck in love, with all four of her husbands dying suddenly. The town suspects they weren’t all accidents, but no one can prove anything. Ruby has been dead for years in Cam and Jules’ POV, but these letters Ruby wrote in the days before her death are her confessions…. but we don’t know who they are intended for.

This story is nuts. I’m not usually a fan of rich family drama stories, but this one got me. I flew through it in just a couple hours because the twists and drama kept sucking me in. At first, I was mainly interested in all of Ruby’s dead husbands, but the current timeline also proved to be a doozy.

I don’t want to say too much and ruin the twists for you, but daggum. The way this book comes together at the end is *chef’s kiss*. Rachel weaves together so many storylines and motives in a wonderful way that I didn’t fully see coming, which always garners high marks from me. If I can figure it out in the first half, it’s zero fun. This one, I didn’t pause to try to figure it out. I was just all in on the ride. This definitel tops the previous book I read by Rachel, The Villa [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM].

If this is how 2024 is starting out, we’re in for a solid year of books.

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