THE HEIRESS, enjoyable mildly thrilling novel inciting you to eat the rich

THE HEIRESS
RACHEL HAWKINS
St. Martin's Press
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This book should have a subtitle: "Schadenfreude Unbound" feels about right. Soapy, sudsy storytelling that plunges nasty, unkind, entitled rich idiots into a decades-long feud à la Succession, fighting over money, fighting dirty, being hateful to each other and everyone around them...the poor bastard who actually inherits the family estate and fortune had my complete sympathy for running away. I'd've done the same.

My introduction to Author Hawkins was her largely unloved-by-fans (most I know gave it about three stars to my four) novel THE VILLA (which review is linked). I liked it fine. Like this book, it was escapist suds with a mote of social commentary. This was handled in a way that it could be text or subtext, depending on the reader, and the mood.

The family-secrets trope is evergreen. I can always get behind a good story of how awful families are to each other! The more money is involved...and there is an ocean of money in this one...the more awful behavior there is. Cam, our heir-apparent, is the victim of bullying by his cousin-of-sorts Ben as they are growing up...and yet it is Ben who contacts Cam when the disrepair of Ashby House (modeled on Biltmore, the Vanderbilt mansion outside Asheville, North Carolina) becomes too much for the Southern-Gothic, heavily derivative "family" he's left in possession of it to handle on their own resources...they are far too Refined to earn their own money, do you not see? As he's the heir to all the money, and the property, but won't take them into his possession, no one can do anything without his say-so and he won't say so.

I got a frisson when I thought about how much that email must've hurt babbitty, bullying Ben.

Cam and his wife Jules, who tell the story in alternating chapters, are to all appearances a happy-enough suburban couple. They set out to assess the situation in person. The trip is from Colorado; not a minor jaunt. They arrive, and while Jules had until now had no real idea of the scope of Cam's background's wealth (a thing that set my BS filter into fine-mesh mode...no particles allowed through), she has a crash course now. Her impoverished childhood, and the sheer opulence of Cam's adoptive family's digs, sets off a major lust in Jules to stop being a hardscrabble never-was and settle in to being utterly secure.

Financially, anyway.

The adoption of a nobody by the heiress whose fortune is being fought over is unsurprisingly very unpopular with her family. The third PoV in the novel is letters sent by the dead Ruby to an unknown recipient that go a long way to explain her thinking...there are good reasons for it...and the book uses them effectively as spikes to hang the twists and turns of the plot onto. I do not particularly think that the ending was a natural outgrowth of the set-up. I was not convinced that Jules and Cam were happily married at the beginning, given the amount of uncommunicated stuff in their relationship. That this money exists and is legally her husband's money is bound to give her some Feelings. That his wife is seduced by the trappings of wealth that he saw through and rejected is bound to give Cam some Feelings. They were not ignored, these factors, but they got less oomph than I thought was their due.

I can only get up to three and a half stars because these factors kept me from getting to the ending with the author. A very entertaining book, a good commentary on the fragility of relationships, a brutal take-down of the superrich and their appalling sense of entitlement...all yes, and all positives. The ending being of a piece with the set-up...well, not for this reader.

Go into it with a heart full of malice for rich people, and enjoy the hell out of it on that level.