The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

 

My thoughts

The Wife Upstairs was my favorite by this author until I read this book. This is hands down her best yet. It has a lot going on. A lot of mystery, edge of your seat thrills, intrigue, murder, abuse. It has it all...

Ruby McTavish, born June 1, 1940, is fighter. She always has been and seems always will be. She went missing when she was just a little girl of three. Found months later in another state. Seems she is destine for heartache though. Ruby is smart. She knows how to make money. How to get what she wants. She meets and marries Duke Callahan at the young age of twenty. Things didn't end to well for him. He was shot on their honeymoon in Paris by an intruder. Duke was the first of four husbands who meet untimely demise while married to Ruby. The one that she truly loved with all her heart was Andrew Miller. He was her third husband and the longest marriage. She was married to Hugh Woodward who was her father's accountant for a couple of years before his demise. And her last husband, Roddy Kenmore, who was like twenty-five years her junior. He fell of a yacht and drowned. He couldn't swim.

I did not like her first husband. He was a bit mean. Her second was too clingy and way older than her. The third I loved. The last one was a child hooked on drugs it seems. Ruby and Andrew had a true love. One that would strong for them both. He was an artist who painted her portrait. 

After losing her last husband Ruby adopted a child. A boy named Camden. I really like him and his wife Jules. Camden didn't want the house or the money after Ruby died. She had left everything to him. He went away and had no intention of returning. Fate brings him along with his wife to Tavistock. Jules meets Cam's family and finds out why he left. Why he just could not stay with these people one more minute. 

Everyone in this story has secrets. From Ruby to Jules. You will learn exactly what happened to each of Ruby's husbands. What happened in her life. The things she went through. You get to know Cam very well and his wife. You hear in chapters/letters written by Ruby what her life was like living in Tavistock with her sister and dad. And her mother. How everything plays out. Even what may have happened to her when she went missing all those years ago.

I enjoyed this book so much. It had me guessing at a lot and yes I did figure out a few things. I just can't say what or I'll give away some big secrets. I will say that I hope Cam and Jules have a long and healthy life...

Thank you #NetGalley, #RachelHawkins, #StMartinsPress for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

Five huge stars and a very high recommendation.

About

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. In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.

But to everyone’s surprise, Cam 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, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam’s estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. 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.