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The Heiress
By Rachel Hawkins
🎧 Narrated by: Dan Bittner, Eliza Foss, John Pirhalla, Patti Murin
Book 12 of 2024

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and St. Martin’s Press for my review copies!

This was my 3rd Rachel Hawkins mystery, and I think my favorite of the three. I think it often does a disservice to her books to classify them as “thrillers” because they are more of a slow burn – I often don’t feel that true fear for the characters that I think really puts the “thrill” in “thriller.” And unlike many mystery novels, The Heiress doesn’t start with finding a body and then figuring out the mystery. Instead, the crime unfolds before your eyes, and it’s more of a matter of deciding if any of the characters really “deserve” to be free at the end of the book, since few are truly innocent. 

The Heiress is a multi-POV mystery following the late Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore’s living family, interspersed with letters from Ruby about her remarkable life. Her heir and adopted son, Cam, and his fiance, Jules, are our main characters. 

I thought this was a lot of fun. I think the lack of sun in January makes me want to read more unlikable characters – I’m certainly not at my most pleasant in the dead of winter, and I think it’s kind of fun to remind myself that my worst is these character’s best. 

I think what can be tricky about this book is that it doesn’t necessarily feel like there’s a plot? Like yes, the inciting incident is that Cam and Jules show up at Ashby house with all of his horrible relatives. But that’s more of a situation than the set up for a story. If you like having a clear plot or whodunnit, this book is probably not for you. But if you like to just hang out with characters and explore their motivations, and watch some action at the end, this is the book for you! 

🎧 I binged most of the book by audio, I really liked that there were different narrators for the different POVs. It really helped to add clarity about who’s POV I was in while listening, I feel like sometimes that can be more confusing by audiobook. The narrators voice acting really matched the characters and added to the atmosphere of the novel! It was especially fun to hear Ruby’s letters read by just one voice actor, she really leaned into the character. I highly recommend the audiobook! 

[book synopsis]

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. In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.

But to everyone’s surprise, Cam 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, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam’s estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. 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.