The Inheritance Games

Avery Kylie Grambs was a practically invisible teenager before she mysteriously inherited billions of dollars.  

After her mother’s death, Avery lives with her older sister, Libby. Avery plans to graduate from high school, secure a scholarship, and help her sister with the bills. But then, Avery is summoned to Texas to hear the will of Tobias Hawthorne, the ninth-richest man in the world. Avery is incredibly confused because she’s never met the man before. When the will is read, Avery is shocked to discover that she has inherited nearly all of Tobias’s wealth, uprooting the lives of Tobias’s daughters, Skye and Zara, and Skye’s sons, Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander. But there’s one condition—Avery must live in Hawthorne House for a year with all the people whose inheritances she just stole. 

Well, as they say, more money, more problems. Avery quickly finds herself with a target on her back as she faces threats from those within and outside of the Hawthorne family. As Avery spends more time with the Hawthornes, she gets to know the family and realizes that all of this is a puzzle waiting to be solved. With no idea who is rooting for or against her, Avery struggles to adjust to her new life while simultaneously trying to figure out why Tobias chose her to be his heir.  

Avery is strong-willed and fiercely independent. She is initially confused and stunned by this turn of events but keeps her head high and her wits about her. Her background is vastly different from that of everyone she interacts with in her new life, but she is able to adapt and hold her own. Avery is also incredibly kind-hearted and doesn’t spend any of her new money on herself; instead, she attempts to send money to a homeless man. Avery also tries to protect her sister from her abusive on-and-off boyfriend, Drake. Avery is kind to those important to her and draws firm boundaries with those who try to harm her. Readers will be drawn to these admirable traits and find Avery to be a likable protagonist. 

It is compelling to watch Avery take control of her new responsibilities and shake up the Hawthorne world as she makes changes and takes risks. The story also explores themes of family, love, and the importance of staying loyal to those who are important to you. The narrative is constantly evolving, leaving readers desperate to turn the page and discover the next piece of the puzzle.  

The Inheritance Games will captivate readers with its twists and turns, riddles, complex family relationships, and a touch of romance along the way. The story will keep readers on the edge of their seats with dozens of unanswered questions — some of which remain open-ended, perfectly leading to the second book in the series, The Hawthorne Legacy.  

Sexual Content 

• On a flight, Libby, Avery’s sister, tells Avery, “Smoosh in and hold up your warm nuts.” Another woman on the flight gives them a dirty look, likely due to the innuendo.  
• Skye, the Hawthorne grandsons’ mother, says she has lovely conversations with people and “that’s how [she] ended up with four sons. Wonderful, intimate conversations with four fascinating men.” 
• Jameson, one of the Hawthorne grandsons, is shirtless when he meets Avery. She notes “the muscles in his back tensing, rippling over his shoulder blades.” She later looks at his abs and his hair before he brushes his bare arm against hers as he leaves. 
• Xander, one of the Hawthorne grandsons, describes the Hawthorne House as if “an M.C. Escher drawing conceived a child with Leonardo da Vinci’s most masterful designs.” Avery cuts him off and says he can’t use any “baby-making” terminology to describe the house. 
• Jameson tells Avery it would be a shame if they were related. Avery tells herself to stop thinking about his smile and looking at his lips. 
• Max, Avery’s best friend, calls Jameson “faxable,” meaning “fuckable.” She says that he looks like he knows his way around a “fax machine” and is probably really great at “dialing numbers.” 
• Thea, a girl who shows Avery around her new school, tells her that “everyone who likes boys wanted to date” the Hawthorne boys. 
• Jameson says that Avery “doesn’t bite” and that “now that the issue of relatedness has been settled in the negative, I’d be game if she did.” 
• Avery walks past Grayson, one of the Hawthorne grandsons, and brushes up against him, thinking, “even that split second of contact made me feel like I was going two hundred miles an hour.” She later finds it attractive that he uses the word “empirically” and then tells herself to get her mind out of the gutter. 
• After someone shoots at Avery, she and Jameson kiss. He angles her face by pulling her hair while she imagines him shirtless like before. She thinks that the kiss “isn’t soft and sweet” and it’s what she needed. 
• In order to stay safe, Max recommends that Avery “whack” the entire Hawthorne family, but she’s worried Avery will take that as a euphemism.  
• Max tells Avery that she sent “personal photos” to her boyfriend, Jaxon – meaning nude photographs of herself. After they break up, he sends the photos to her parents. 
• Nash, one of the Hawthorne grandsons, tells Avery that Zara, his aunt, and her husband had trouble conceiving, while his mom “would leave for a few months, come back pregnant. Wash, rinse, and repeat.” 
• After protecting Avery from his mother, Avery brings her hand up to Nash’s chest and then his jaw. He tells her that he’ll always protect her, “But this. . . us. . . It can’t happen, Avery. I’ve seen the way Jameson looks at you.” 

Violence 

• Avery notes that Drake, Libby’s boyfriend, has “a fondness for punching walls and extolling his own virtues for not punching Libby.”  
• After hearing that Avery received most of the money in the will, Avery notes that Skye, the Hawthorne grandsons’ mother, looks “like she could kill someone. Literally.”  
• Avery can’t be kicked out of the house she now owns. The family looks at her, and she thinks, “They’re going to kill me. Someone in this room is actually going to kill me.” Several times, Avery worries that the family will kill her. 
• Libby goes back home, and when she returns, one of her eyes is bruised and almost swollen shut. It’s implied that Drake hit her.  
• Libby says her mom used to hit her when she was really stressed. However, Libby says she understood because things were hard for her mother raising Libby alone; because of this, Libby adds that she tried to “make everything easier” for her mother.  
• Xander, one of the Hawthorne grandsons, and three other boys leave the headmaster’s office, and they’re all bleeding from what Xander calls “Robot Battle Death Match Fight Club.” It’s unclear exactly what this is, and Xander does not elaborate. 
• Avery’s attorney tells her that Toby, one of Tobias’s sons, and three other young people died in a fire at a vacation home. The nature of the fire is unclear. 
• Angry after dinner one night, Jameson goes into the woods and punches a tree “multiple times.” His wounds are not described. 
• One night in the woods, someone shoots at Avery. They don’t shoot her, but the bullets hit a tree, and she “got hit by a couple pieces of bark.” She thinks to herself, “I’m bleeding” and “Pain.” There’s a “stabbing pain” in her chest, and her “chest throbbed” where she had been hit by the bark. Afterwards, her bodyguard stitches her “skin back together.” 
• When Tobias’s mother was younger, she played piano, but she got too much attention for it, and her husband broke her fingers. He was “met with a tragic accident not long after that.” 
• Avery’s attorney and bodyguard plan to have Avery go out shopping to draw out the person who shot at her previously. It works and the shooter tries to run Avery’s car off of the road; no one is injured. 
• It is later revealed that Drake was the one who shot at Avery, and Skye helped him plan it. 
• Grayson tells Avery that he killed Emily, a girl he used to date. Later, he adds that if it weren’t for him, she “wouldn’t have been there or jumped.” Finally, he reveals that they went cliff diving, which didn’t kill her, but “her heart stopped from either the adrenaline, the altitude, or the change in pressure.”  
• Jameson tells Avery and Grayson that he “watched Emily die” because she was gasping and hunched over, and he thought she was “tricking him.” 

Drugs and Alcohol 

• Jameson is drunk when he first meets Avery.  
• One evening, Jameson drinks to cope with the fact that he knows nothing about his father.  
• At dinner, Skye gives a toast while she is drunk and slurring her words. 
• After getting stitches from being shot at, Avery drinks tea that has a lot of whiskey in it. 

Language 

• Profanity is infrequent and includes bastard, hell, ass, bitch, and screw. 
• Max has very strict parents who watch her closely, so she and Avery frequently talk using words very similar to curses to avoid this. One example is Max texts Avery, “Are you foxing with me, beach?” 
• Avery describes Tobias by saying, “There weren’t any polite terms for what Tobias Hawthorne was, other than really insert-expletive-of-your-choice-here filthy rich.” 
• In mentioning playing a game, Grayson says, “And God help us, we played.” 
• Avery and Xander try to get Jameson to join them. Xander says, “I can report that some very colorful language was used when I requested his presence.”

Supernatural 

• None 

Spiritual Content 

• None 

by Alexa David-Lang