The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
25 January 2024
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Audio, Book Review, Mystery, Rachel Hawkins, The Heiress, Thriller
My Five Word TL:DR Review : One inheritance, one dysfunctional family
Before I start this review I would mention that I listened to the audio version of this one and it was excellent.
Anyhow, The Heiress is my favourite book by Rachel Hawkins to date. It feels like she’s achieved this perfect combination of, almost cosy mystery but with sinister undertones together with a story telling voice that feels like its channelling Daphne Du Maurier – to be clear – gothic. So, the story is a winning mash up of different character motivations, secrets and lies and wonderful pacing all brought together by a lovely story telling style using past and present storylines and different methods such as letters and newspaper articles to relay the different events.
Firstly, to the characters. I’d like to say that the main characters are Jules and Camden, but, really, let’s be honest, the titular Heiress steals the show – even though she’s dead! Ruby McTavish Callahan was filthy rich. Heiress to her family’s fortune she also managed to accrue wealth in her own right during her crazy life. Ruby became famous as a child when she was kidnapped and returned to the family a year later. On top of that she had four husbands, who all died – I can practically hear you raising your eyebrows. She relates her story to the reader through a series of letters – to whom the letters are addressed is, of course, part of the mystery that eventually unfolds. I loved her dark humour.
Camden is Ruby’s adopted son and inherited the bulk of her estate. He chose instead to reject the wealth and leave the family home eventually settling down to a regular job and marrying the love of his life – Jules. Jules is a very interesting narrator, I can’t really say too much about her here other than the two clearly are in love, but, Jules has quite a few secrets of her own (well so does every character in the book to be fair, even Cam).
I’m not going to elaborate too much on the other characters, lets say that they are very bitter about Camden inheriting the bulk of what they consider to be their family’s estate and so when Cam decides to make the trip home and rebuild some bridges he and his wife don’t receive a warm welcome. I have mentioned that everyone here has secrets – I would add that nobody is completely innocent either.
Secondly, in terms of the plot. Well, we have all the family secrets to unravel and on top of that we have the past to catch up on and the true story of Ruby told in her own style. Again, I won’t say anything more.
Thirdly. I loved the atmosphere of this. It has this old style mystery feeling, the characters are almost exaggerated versions of themselves, totally over the top, apart from Jules and Cam who have the appearance of being the only down to earth characters of the story. There’s lots of backstabbing and furtive goings on. There’s a delicious gothic feel to the piece with Ashby House – an old and rambling mansion that has fallen into disrepair surrounded by thick forest and sheer cliffs. It almost feels as though you’re reading a conjured up plot from the board game Cluedo (It was Ruby, in the Lounge, using the candlestick – just joking – no spoilers here). It’s kind of hammed up but in a really infectious and unputdownable way and I think the reveals and secrets are perfectly blended. Hawkins manages to keep the tension throughout by revealing certain jaw droppers usually quickly followed by another teaser. She lets you off the hook, and then she puts you right back on it.
In conclusion, I don’t think I can lay a single criticism on this book. I loved it from start to finish. I consumed it in about two days and I enjoyed every minute. Lots of twists and turns and a totally satisfying ending. If you’re looking for something a bit more dark or brutal then this isn’t what you’ll find amongst these pages but I can’t recommend this enough if you’re looking for a compelling and addictive vipers den of secrets and lies.
I bought an audio version of The Heiress and thoroughly enjoyed the way the story was narrated. The above is my own opinion.
My rating 5 stars
Top Ten Tuesday : Halloween
26 October 2021
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Chiller, Ghosts, Halloween, Murder, Mystery, Recommendations, Vampires
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic. Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here. This week’s topic :
Halloween Freebie
With the exception of one of my chosen topics (the adaptation – which I loved btw and highly recommend) all the books below have been fairly recent reads that have been read during the last 12/13 months. I was going to go all old-school horror but decided I’d like to use this topic to look at some more recent reads that I’ve enjoyed and are perfect for this time of the year.
Haunting/Ghostly
Later by Stephen King
Favourite Adaptation
Dr Sleep by Stephen King
Vampire
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Creature Feature
Near the Bone by Christina Henry
Psychological/Thriller
Come With Me by Ronald Malfi
Gothic
The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell
Slasher Style
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
Fictional retelling of true crime
In the Garden of Spite (aka Triflers Need Not Apply) by Camilla Bruce
Horror/Thriller
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
Dystopian horror
The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier
The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells (John Cleaver book No.4)
12 June 2015
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Dan Wells, Horror, John Cleaver No.4, Mystery, The Devil's Only Friend, Thriller
The Devil’s Only Friend is the first in a new Trilogy starring John Wayne Cleaver. There have apparently been three earlier books but The Devil’s Only Friend can be read as a standalone and indeed it’s not difficult to pick up on what took place previously. Having said that I really enjoyed this and to a cetain extent wish I had picked up the previous books, even though I admit that I probably won’t do so now, but just purely from a character development perspective.
In The Devil’s Only Friend John is now working with the FBI. His prior experiences dealing with, and by that I mean killing, demons (or the withered as they’re called here) make him a necessary part of the team. He’s not completely trusted by his colleagues of course, and let’s face it that’s hardly a surprise given his personality. John definitely suffers from an antisocial personality disorder – I would say that he is a sociopath (or maybe even a psychopath)?? and maybe his backstory would have been a bit more definitive in that respect. For now I’m going with sociopath. He fantasises, in a fairly calculated manner, about killing people and animals and he seems to have a set of rules by which he keeps his tendencies under control – including counting sequences. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The world we’re dealing with here is a modern, everyday setting, the difference being that demons live amongst the humans. They, for the most part, look human and integrate into society. They’re very strong and dangerous though and for the purpose of this story they’re called the withered – because they lack something, something that they need in order to survive and something that they usually have to take, forcibly, from others. John’s role here is to find out what that special ‘something’ is in each particular case so that the FBI can, in as carefully controlled and safe a setting as possible, kill the withered they’re currently tracking. Now, the FBI, may finally be aware of the withered but that doesn’t mean that there doesn’t exist a LOT of doubt and skepticism and the team John works with is relatively understaffed and under resourced as a result. A situation which isn’t going to help when the enemy becomes aware of their existence and decides to bring the war to them instead of remaining as sitting ducks.
I thought this was a really good read. When I first picked it up I wasn’t sure if it would all be horror and whilst there is horror involved this is a bit deeper than that. We of course have the withered – but these creatures are not simply evil – they’re driven themselves by whatever it is they lack. Then we have John, and it’s difficult to really know yet whether I really like him or not as some of his internal thoughts are frankly a bit scary, who suffers from his own personality disorder and would be considered to be damaged or maybe even missing something fundamental to human nature himself.
There are a number of characters involved, none of them are really particularly well expanded upon – and I don’t mean that in a negative way but just more that they play a lesser role that John – and I will also just mention that the author is fairly ruthless with his cast so you might want to bear that in mind.
The one constant in John’s life, carried forward from his past experiences is Brooke – a previous friend/girl next door who has rather unfortunately become the hidden weapon in John and the FBI’s arsenal against the withered. I won’t go too much into that other than to say she is an interesting character to read and I would enjoy more involvement from her.
The Devil’s Only Friends was a great start to this new series. Part murder mystery, part horror, part psychological thriller with an unusual main protagonist. I’m definitely interested in seeing how John develops. Like I say, I’m not sure what to feel about him just yet although, in spite of his inner turmoil, he’s clearly not all bad and at least wants to be ‘better’.
I will definitely read on with this series.
I received a copy of this from the publishers via Netgalley for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.
Books and travelling with Lynn 