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THERAPY!!! THERAPY FOR ALL OF YOU!

my thoughts (mild spoilers ahead)
�� i ain't never seen four emotionally intelligent brothers. two of them always gotta have unaddressed trauma.
�� the young adult threshold for personality is in HELL. all you need to do is give your teenage main character a vaguely tragic past, enough stubbornness to allow her to mildly bump heads with love interests every once in a while, a weakness for hot emotionally unavailable rich boys, and a best friend of color to carry things (for flavor).
�� not this billionaire secretly surveilling a low income teenage girl for most of her adolescence while she's struggling to stay afloat and literally living out of her car? taking and saving photos of her without her knowledge? and hoarding his wealth all the while? while she's barely scraping by? until the day he dies and finally decides—now that he no longer needs that wealth—it'll all go to her in exchange for using her as a pawn in his family's trauma olympics? GUILLOTINE!
�� LIKE? ARE YOU DERANGED? JUST HIRE A FAMILY THERAPIST? YOU LITERALLY HAVE EVERY RESOURCE AT YOUR DISPOSAL?
�� i clocked the endgame from the moment the hawthorne brothers were introduced, which is always irritating, because love triangles only really work (at least for me) when there seems to be a genuine struggle to decide between two equally interesting, three dimensional characters.
�� not to get into semantics, but if faced with a choice between two rich white boys, why NOT PICK THE ARTISTIC PHILANTHROPIST? WHO IS GENTLE AND FORGIVING? AND WASN'T PLAYING A BULLSHIT HOT AND COLD GAME WITH AVERY'S HEART BECAUSE HE IS EMOTIONALLY UNHINGED WITH THE MENTAL MATURITY OF A 13 YEAR OLD GTA GAMER?
�� this is how all of jameson and avery's interactions went:
"can you point me to the bathroom?" i asked.
"he who leaves the game, loses, heiress," he said.
"please, i really have to pee, can you just��"
"the ball always looks for the best player," he replied with the glint of a grin, cutting me off.
"jameson, please��"
"play alone and you’re bound to win, mystery girl."
�� THIS MAN DID NOT HAVE A PERSONALITY. HE WAS JUST A TRENCH COAT OF FORTUNE COOKIE QUOTES. FLEXED HIS ABS A LITTLE AND CALLED IT A DAY.
�� the amount of times the narrator repeats lines of dialogue verbatim in her head did in fact give me a migraine.
�� xander was the best brother—a puppy, if you will—and i stand by that.
�� this was textbook young adult in that i could feel the plot mechanics moving as i zipped through the pages. the inheritance games is very much a predictable "mystery" that ended up slowed down by the tediousness of a love triangle i still don't really buy.
�� HOW OLD IS AVERY? are we ever gonna ask that? because she's interacting romantically with adult men as a minor? just wondering hehe
�� on that note, this concept would have been so much better if the characters were all college-aged. imagine the shock, the intrigue, the comedy of a low income, jeff bezos-hating college student with loans out the ass suddenly coming into billions? and having to live with two hot white guys? this concept is a lot funnier than it was written. buying into a high school girl solving a billionaire's years-long puzzle and catching the attention of the 18 + 19 year old brothers while she's at it is just a bit too much of a stretch, even for ya.
�� i also can't get over the whole emily subplot. this book was literally just....avery: Mf's be in relationships with their dead cheating Gf for like 3-5 years 😒 like damn other ppl wanna date you too 🙋‍♂️❗️😂�� and for most of the novel, that is exactly how jameson and grayson act. then 75% in, jameson suddenly changes his tune and goes the whole "i actually don't care about emily at all despite constant references to and comparisons between you and her�� route. like, okay, buddy.

having said all of that, yes, i will be picking up book two for gay ally and HoC (Hawthorne of Color) xander.