This domestic drama follows Camden McTavish and his wife, Jules, ten years after Camden's mother died. Camden is the adopted son of Ruby McTavish - North Carolina's richest woman - and when she died, she left her entire estate to him. He originally didn't want anything to do with the money, estranged family, or Ashby House. But now, after his uncle's death, Camden returns to Ashby house with the goal of getting out and back to his normal life as quickly as possible. But Jules feels differently and the more time she spends at Ashby house, the more she wants Cam to embrace his roots and take everything Ruby gave him.
This was such a fun first read for the year and was everything I now look forward to in a Rachel Hawkins read. We get into the meat of the story right away, the characters are a little over the top but fun to read their POVs, and the pacing was fast enough that this was such a popcorn read. This read to me like a solid domestic drama where I was primarily interested in getting the truth along with the gossip. I'm not a reality TV watcher, but it felt like this would scratch that same itch. t didn't feel like there were enough stakes for it to qualify as a thriller or suspense and there wasn't really a core mystery that the characters were trying to solve so domestic drama just felt right.
The family dynamics in this reminded me a lot of the movie Knives Out where all the family members don't really like each other but they all play nice enough so they can keep the cash flowing around when needed. I also loved how we got details of Ruby's relationship with her family in the past in addition to Cam and the current day family members. This really hit the spot for a book of 'rich people problems' and I know that isn't going to be for every reader, but I really enjoyed it. I liked how many different interactions we were able to get between all the characters and how we get Cam's and Jules's reactions and feelings of these different interactions.
If you love the Secrets of the Past trope - then this book is for you. We get secrets on top of secrets and as a result, we get a few unreliable narrators. Either unreliable to the reader or unreliable between the characters which was a really interesting way of reading that trope. One of the POVs is letters from Ruby detailing her chilhood/life before adopting Cam and those letters give the reader a lot of insider knowledge that the characters don't have. So we can see the characters going about their lives with one belief but the reader knows the truth from these letters (and eventually the truth comes out). Jules and Cam each have their own POV chapters and they have their own secrets from each other, the rest of the characters, and the reader as well. I do think a lot of the reveals of the secrets were pretty easy to see coming and I was really only surprised by one at the very end but I really enjoyed guessing and then reading along to see if I was correct.
The characters were borderline a bit underdeveloped for my taste as a character-driven reader but the act 3 reveals really added a bunch of layers to these characters that I was searching for. The current day timeline takes place over only a couple of days or maybe a week so there isn't a ton of time for any real character arc there. However, the amount of flashbacks and family history we get really come in clutch to show us just how far these characters have come. I do think that if we had a bit more flashbacks of Cam's childhood or his adolescence then that would have helped even more. We are told a lot about how he didn't like the family and the mental games they played but I wanted to see more of that on page and see the impact it had on Cam.
Overall, this was a really fun, popcorn type of read. If you love rich people problems, secrets from the past, and messy family stories then this might be right up your alley.
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC. Expected publication date is January 9, 2024
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