A review by oddduck
The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

5.0

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a very good suspense writer and this book is a perfect example of that. This is one of the fastest paced books I’ve read in a while. We picked up right where the previous book ended and did not stop moving forward until this one ended. The puzzles and developments were intriguing and made for some very good twists and turns. I’ve seen several people complaining about red herrings, but I personally loved that. It's a mystery and that's a common feature of the genre. The assumptions the characters made based on the information they had made perfect sense. I was almost fully on board with them as fact, though the reality also worked for me and didn’t necessarily come as a surprise either.
Though Toby’s real daughter was a bit of a surprise. I think it was foreshadowed well enough, though the connection with Mellie and Eli could have been on the page more.

The thing with Mellie and Eli as a whole made sense but also wasn’t foreshadowed enough for me. The explanation we got at the end gives us enough information to explain what happened and their motives, but it also came kind of late. Like, I never would have guessed any of what they said prior to them telling us. So that could have been executed better.

I love that we got to spend time with Max. She’s such a fun character, though I would have liked for her to have more of her own story. She kind of does, with her parents, but we really don’t know what’s going on with her. I would understand this if she and Avery had had a conversation when Max first arrived and Max had said she really didn’t want to talk about it, but we don’t get anything like that. Max is really just there to support Avery, but Avery doesn’t really do much for her in return, which is unfortunate. This is one of the few problems I had with this book, because I love Max and think she deserves better.

Same with Libby. She’s definitely going through something in this book, but we don’t see a whole lot of it. And yeah, it's Avery's story and Libby's problems should not fall to her to solve (or be in any way responsible for), but it doesn't really feel like we see enough of what's going on with her. And this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't reasonably close, but they are. So it's kind of weird that Avery doesn't seem to wonder about what Libby's dealing with or want to talk to her about it.

I’m very glad that we seem to be done with the love triangle. I’m really not a huge fan of love triangles, and it certainly seemed like Avery already knew who she wanted pretty early in this book, but then it got dragged out and I was not into those parts as much. I’ve also got mixed feelings about the whole Jameson or Grayson thing, just knowing their past with Emily. I can appreciate what it does in terms of parallelism, but I also think the whole thing is kind of dumb and a little sexist? Like, they’re fighting over who gets to date a girl and not taking into account what she might want. Which is kind of gross to me. It was skirted around with Emily, because her thing was causing problems, apparently, but it still doesn’t sit right with me. I think it was a little better with Avery, but it’s also just kind of a weird situation. I would like to move on and not revisit this in the final book, but I suspect we are likely not quite done with it, unfortunately.

On a related note, I liked Avery’s hesitance to get involved with either Jameson or Grayson. Avery has had to take care of herself in a lot of ways for many years, so she's not used to feeling like she can rely on people or be vulnerable with them. I'm so happy that this extends to potential love interests and that it isn't a case of Love Fixes Everything or the love interest is just So Special he's the Exception. Even when she makes her choice at the end, she's still nervous and a little scared. But she has made the choice to try this, so it works.

This was an excellent follow up to a fantastic start and I'm very excited to see how this trilogy gets wrapped up.
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