strange and random happenstance: Family Secrets

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 369 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Twenty years ago a tragedy befell the Hawthorne family. Tobias Hawthorne's only son, Toby, went on a cross country roadtrip of debauchery with friends he met in rehab that ended in a conflagration on his family's private island. The fire was blamed on a local girl to cover up any culpability on Toby's part as he was seen buying the accelerant. But as for Toby's body, it was never found. And that's when Tobias Hawthorne changed his will. Yet for twenty years Tobias believed his son was out there. Somewhere. So when his youngest grandson, the only one to know he was dying, requested one final game just for himself he knew he would ask Xander to find Toby. Little does Xander know that Avery might have already found him. When her mother died she took up playing chess in the park with a homeless man named Harry. When she sees a picture of Toby she realizes that she was playing chess with him. Only he has fled. Avery knows this because she tried to give "Harry" some money from her inheritance and he was already gone. The only place that she and Jameson can think to search for clues is in the bricked up wing of the house which was Toby's. There scrawled across the walls, only visible under blacklight because he was a Hawthorne after all, is the truth that drove Toby into a reckless tailspin. He was adopted. This revelation sends Avery into her own tailspin. Could it be that she really is a Hawthorne despite the DNA test? Could she be Toby's daughter? Her mother sure loved games and had a secret about the day Avery was born that Avery never learned while her mother lived. But the writing is on the wall. Literally. Toby's handwriting looks so familiar to Avery and then she realizes that she's seen it before. On her birth certificate. It might be her father's name, but Toby signed it. This makes Avery's desire to find Toby her number one priority. Nothing else matters. Not even losing her inheritance. She will find the truth whatever it takes. And it takes a lot; sifting through old wills, travelling to dangerous locales, discovering secrets long since buried, and family no one ever knew. But is the truth worth a life?

I think the problem I had with The Inheritance Games is I didn't feel there were real stakes. Sure, there was "a fortune at stake" as this book's cover proclaims but a fortune in the balance where wealthy people are concerned isn't really compelling. What is compelling is what the fortune makes other people do. Aside from some gunplay I didn't feel like anyone was really in danger. Avery was going to survive to see out the trilogy, them's the facts. The Hawthorne Legacy though upped the stakes to be about life and death while performing a wonderful bait and switch. Because anyone reading the final pages of the first installment would be convinced that this volume would be all about finding Toby, the missing Hawthrone. And while it is, it's more about Toby's legacy. The actual corpses he's left in his wake. While, like Emily's death, the death's in Toby's past were an accident, he is far more culpable. He did toy with the idea of burning it all to the ground, it's just that a tragically timed storm made the final decision for him. But another death changes everything and actually puts death on the table versus just another game. People could actually die now, and not just in the past. Finally life and death stakes! Yet oddly enough that wasn't the driving force of The Hawthorne Legacy, the driving force was the legacy of all the Hawthrones. Because here there's an interesting mirroring of the first book with the first will that Tobias wrote when Toby disappeared. That will, like the will that left everything to Avery, was meant to bring his family together. Though his daughters never saw that will it too was strewn with clues for them to reconnect and find Toby. And in their search for Toby they all learn something about themselves, Avery learns she isn't a Hawthorne by blood, Jameson and Nash find their fathers, and we learn about the truly convoluted nature of the relationship between the Hawthornes and the family retainers, the Laughlins. We get ALL the family secrets, ALL the tea is spilled, combined with actual stakes? More like this please!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Avery Grambs, Family, Family Secrets, Jameson Hawthorne, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Murder Most Foul, Stakes, The Hawthorne Legacy, The Inheritance Games, Tobias Hawthorne, Toby Hawthorne, Wills, Xander Hawthorne

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
Published by: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Publication Date: January 21st, 2025
Format: Hardcover, 640 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

They weren't rebels, they were revolutionaries. They fled the lies they had been told but in Navarre's darkest hour they returned. They were able to raise the wards around Basgiath. They saved those they could. But so many were lost and so many more will be lost. Violet's mother, General Lilith Sorrengail, is dead. Aretia's wards will fail. And Xaden is... Xaden channeled from the source to save Basgiath. The price will be his soul. He will become venin. Violet will not believe this. Just because there are no accounts of initiates just walking away from the power doesn't mean that Xaden isn't strong enough. They just have to be careful. After the loss of her mother Violet can't face the loss of the miracle that is her and Xaden. What they are is the result of a precise combination of tragedies that broke them both so completely that when they collided they became something entirely new. But the venin call to Xaden. Jack Barlowe is locked up down in the cells calling to him. Tempting him. Though Jack won't give up the name of his Sage or anything other than trivial information. The venin want Xaden ignorant so that he will have no choice but to become one of them. As their desiccation of the Continent has shown, they are greedy and will stop at nothing. That greed means they won't be satisfied with just Xaden, they want Violet and her irid as well. Which is one piece of needed information that the venin accidentally gave up. Violet now knows exactly what kind of dragon Andarna is. She's an irid scorpiontail. The seventh dragon species now has a name. Which means they can search them out and perhaps power the second wardstone and protect Aretia. But the systematic erasure of history in the archives has them hitting wall after wall. Violet needs her father's research on the second Krovlan Uprising. Which, much like the irids, isn't in Navarre, and definitely isn't on the Continent. She must follow in her father's footsteps, she must journey to Cordyn and from there book passage to Deverelli. She must seek out the merchant Narelle Anselm and take with her the rarest item she possesses. Only there is no magic beyond the Continent. A journey beyond the bounds of magic with dragons and gryphons in search of knowledge and irids seems foolhardy to those in charge. But it is a journey that they must undertake. No matter the dangers. No matter the sacrifices. Though can Violet and Tairn survive if it's Xaden and Sgaeyl who must be sacrificed?

I love this series a ridiculous amount. And one of the reasons is how ridiculous it is. It's angst and trauma and death turned up to eleven. It's like reliving your teenage horrors but with the foreknowledge that nothing good is going to come of it. Yet beneath the trappings of dragons and hot sex there's the message about the importance of history and libraries and books. Oh, this is a series that is really pro book. And, in this day and age, we need that. While the previous two volumes dealt with the systematic erasure of the horrible history of Navarre and how they saved themselves at the cost of everyone else and then erased their history so no one would know of their crimes against humanity, this volume is about personal versus national history. Unbeknownst to our cast of characters they are going to get a whole heaping of personal trauma due to secrets in their past. Ironically while slowly turning into a soulless monster Xaden gets off the lightest with only having to confront his mother Talia. Sure, it's the dinner party from hell, a lot of poison might be involved, but at least it's over quickly. Whereas Violet has to face up to the fact that her parents were keeping a lot of secrets from her and she now has no one to confront about the lies. The least of which is that her paternal grandmother Niara isn't the one who cut off communication with her son and his family, it was the other way around. Because Violet's father, Asher, was up to a whole lot of shady shit; trying to dedicate his daughter to the goddess of war, writing books and secreting them away on other islands, teaching her best friend languages so that he could help her, basically planning for the end times and his daughter's education, but in secret. Sure, it's nice to know the answers are out there and your father was always thinking of you, but wouldn't it have just been so much easier to just be honest? The duplicity and lies have to be eating away at Violet. But then again, her brother made her believe he was dead, so it's not like anyone in the Sorrengail family knows what a healthy relationship is. Though nothing will destroy you as much as what Andarna has to face. She went on this perilous journey with Violet in the hopes the irids would help, or at least fire the wardstone, but she really just wanted to know her family. And her family are assholes. They tell Andarna that she is broken. She was nothing more than a test for humans and they failed. To be told you're nothing, to be told you're broken, my heart broke for Andarna. Damn. All these characters just need hugs. But Andarna gets to go first, come here you pretty irid you!