I received a copy from Netgalley.

It’s been a long time since I’ve started a book and finished it in the same day. I’ve only rated three books five stars this year and this was one of them. I love rich people stories and even more ones about regular people who are thrown into that over the top glamorous world.

In this book teenager Avery, a studios, smart girl is just looking to finish high school and earn a college scholarship. She lives with her older sister Libby and Libby’s questionable asshole boyfriend Drake. While she adores her sister she hates the boyfriend who’s cruel and manipulative in that making you think everything wrong is your fault when it’s not way.

Then everything changes when Grayson Hawthorne shows up with a request for Avery and Libby to attend his grandfather’s will reading. His multi billionaire grandfather. Avery is dumbfounded. She’s never heard of the man. And yet finds out she’s been left his fortune. From sleeping in her car she’s suddenly the richest teenager in the world.

Much to the chagrin on the Hawthorne family, the four grandsons, their mother and her sister. Naturally they’re furious. Avery has to now figure out how this all happened, and no one in the Hawthorne family is happy she’s there. There’s a complex mystery to solve, clues are left for Avery and the boys.

This is one of those compulsive you have to know what’s going on mysteries. I can’t say much for character development, everything felt a little generic and seen a million times before in the family dynamic. I didn’t get much of a sense of personality from Avery other than resourceful, smart and determined. Though her reactions to the situations she found herself thrown into were very believable.

What drove this novel forward for me was the mystery. It’s impossible to recap without being spoilery, the plot is so twisty turny. It has a brilliant narrative that makes the reader keep guessing. While the characters aren’t very fleshed out, there was some delightful banter throughout, the relationships grew more complex throughout the characters. I didn’t guess who the baddie was and it’s one of those…why didn’t I see this coming from a mile away?!?!? reveals. The tension builds wonderfully throughout to the final climax…which was almost in a weird way a bit anticlimactic. It does however, leave on a cliffhanger. I need more.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Children’s UK.

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Hopkins and Satomasso are quite a pair. From heart palpitations to the ever present frustration, they refused to hold back on the chemistry. Their delivery is flameworthy. McKenna James dishes out the emotions with her ever present flair and as always I was easily hooked. Lucky Inheritance sets emotions ablaze with passion, heart and humor.

I don't have much to say, I didn't like this short story. We focus on a woman about to have a c-section because of a condition she has. We have her thinking back on her mother and her childhood while obsessing over the imminent birth. I don't know, the whole thing just didn't work for me. I also think a few times the author wrote this as if some bad fate was about to befall all and then the ending leaves things on a hopeful note. Or maybe not hopeful, just not precarious anymore.

"Can You Feel This?" follows a woman (she stays unnamed I think through this whole thing) who suffers from placenta previa. I actually know about this a little bit cause my work wife had this and was on bed rest during the last two months of her pregnancy. So maybe I am just comparing how she handled things and this unnamed character and finding the fictional character lacking.

I also don't know if the book had been written in the first person if I would have felt more connected to the story. I wonder if Orringer wrote this in second person to put a distance between the main character and reader since the main character feels distant from her husband and child. And I think I just got fed up with it since the whole story is mostly going because of what happened to her mother when she was young this is why she is the way she is now. Which is only part of the story/things. You can choose to be different. And I think the ending was trying to telegraph that (badly). 

I was initially going to read all of the short stories but decided not to. This one didn't work for me and I didn't feel like forcing myself to continue to read the rest of the collection. 

Honestly, Alice Hoffman writes short stories like no one's business. She is the first short story in Amazon's "Inheritance Collection" which looks at five fiction masters reveal that what is past is passed—inside households, across generations, and within the families of our own making. I honestly am not in the mood to read all of the short stories though. I read Hoffman's and loved it and went ehh on the second story and decided to cut my losses at this point. Hoffman's story hits high notes and makes you feel as if you are standing alone with the main character (pre-teen Adeline) in the 1900s in Massachusetts. 

"Everything My Mother Taught Me" follows young Adeline who is grieving her father. Her mother she understands does not love her and did not love her father while he was alive. Because of the times, the two are forced to go off so her mother can find work as a housekeeper to a set of lighthouse keepers off the tip of Cape Ann. Hoffman describes a desolate place that slowly becomes beautiful to Adeline. Adeline has not spoken since her father has died, but she can see what is happening all around her. And once again she realizes that her mother is only showing one side of herself to others. 

I loved this story from beginning to end. Hoffman makes short work of packing punches in her stories. There's a reason why I have read most of her anthology work at this point. She makes you feel as if you are in the middle of nowhere along with Adeline watching how her mother is slowly wrecking another person's life. 

I loved the ending and wanted to read more which is all you can ask for as a reader when you get to the end of a very good book, or in this case, short story.