ARC Review: The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

The Heiress
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publication: St. Martin's Press (January 9, 2024)

Description: New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins returns with a twisted new gothic suspense about an infamous heiress and the complicated inheritance she left behind.

THERE’S NOTHING AS GOOD AS THE RICH GONE BAD

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman, she’s also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But in the aftermath of her death, her adopted son, Camden, wants little to do with the house or the money―and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years later, his uncle’s death pulls Cam and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but the legacy of Ruby is inescapable.

And as Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will––and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

My Thoughts: This romantic Gothic suspense novel is told from two points of view (or maybe three). Jules tells about meeting and falling in love with Camden at a college bar in California. They have a nice life together for ten years. He's teaching English at a boys' school in Colorado and she's working at a living history museum. But things change when Cam gets an email from a cousin which pulls him back into the life he ran away from when he was twenty.

Camden has been successfully ignoring his past and his life with the infamous Ruby McTavish - a woman gone missing as a three-year-old and recovered some months later who grew up married four times, survived the deaths of her husbands, and inherited a massive fortune and a house filled with resentful relatives. 

Cam was her adopted son and never accepted as a real member of the McTavish family. He was casually bullied by his cousin Ben throughout his childhood and roundly ignored by his mother's sister Nelle. Tensions rise after Ruby commits suicide leaving Cam the only heir to her massive fortune causing him to flee to California.

Now, at Jules' urging, Cam and Jules are going back to North Carolina to deal with family and the house Cam owns. But both Cam and Jules are dealing with secrets that they have never shared with each other. Cam wants to clear things up and leave. But Jules wants to stay and make a life in the beautiful house. 

Additions of letters that Ruby wrote to someone telling her story which does include murdering her husbands for various reasons and using various means adds to the Gothic atmosphere of this contemporary story. 

I enjoyed all the twists and turns of the plot and the slow reveal of the various secrets held by the main characters. 

Favorite Quote:

I don't know why I'm telling you this part now. I mean, it probably doesn't even seem all that romantic to you. Cheap college bar, my heart won forever by a free beer and a cute smile, sex on a mattress I'd gotten from Goodwill and suspected someone dies on.

But it was romantic. More than that, it was real.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.