The Brothers Hawthorne by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Book Review

 

The Brothers Hawthorne by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Book Review

The Brothers Hawthorne, the new release by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. It is technically another book in The Inheritance Games series, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with Avery as much. I am so excited to get into this book with you guys, and I will have one review without spoilers for those of you who haven’t read it, and one review with spoilers for those of you who really want to get down into the nitty-gritty.

All right, so first things first—what is this book about? You basically have Grayson and Jameson, and there are two different points of view. Jameson is basically searching for something; it almost felt like he was searching for meaning and needed another game, something else to make his mind move. Grayson is basically trying to protect his two sisters that he didn’t know about before, and their mom. So that is a really, really, really basic plot line for you, and now I’m going to go ahead and get into my review—my non-spoiler review.

I absolutely loved The Inheritance Games. I loved The Hawthorne Legacy. I loved The Final Gambit. I thought that they were all amazing. I am a little disappointed with this book. I don’t think it gave the same excitement that the original three did, and I mean, you can’t capture that original excitement, so I get it. But I didn’t see a big need for this book. I read it anyway because I was really excited, but I still didn’t see the need for it.

So, in Jameson’s plotline, I see how Jennifer Lynn Barnes wanted to stay very true to the puzzles and riddles and games. But in my opinion, with the two different perspectives—Grayson’s and Jameson’s—I could have cared less about Jameson’s perspective. His perspective, while it was supposed to be the exciting one, the one with the impossible task that Jameson was actually making come true, gave me the exact opposite feeling. I was very bored with his perspective. I didn’t really like it. I thought that Jameson acted very immature, and it wasn’t necessary. Everything that he was going through didn’t make sense to me.

I think that was the main thing—I didn’t understand why he was doing it and why he was bringing Avery into it as well. Normally, Jameson is my number one favorite all the time, all the way. Okay, Grayson definitely became my favorite in this book because Grayson’s plotline was more noble. He was trying to help his family, and it didn’t just seem like he was aimlessly running around trying to find meaning in his life. He was doing stuff for family, so I liked his plotline a lot more.

I liked Grayson a lot more in this book—not that I necessarily want him with Avery, that’s a whole other conversation—but Grayson is now definitely, officially my favorite Hawthorne out of the two, Jameson and Grayson. With Grayson’s point of view, I absolutely love his twin sisters. I think Gigi was the funniest and sweetest little ray of sunshine. I thought it was awesome, and I love how Grayson just wanted to protect them and their mother, and really keep them from getting hurt, but also tried to protect Avery at the same time with what happened to Sheffield Grayson a few books back.

Yeah, there’s that. And the whole time I was reading, just to reiterate, I wanted to skip to Grayson’s chapters because Jameson’s were that boring to me. Some people might think that Jameson’s were the most exciting, but I didn’t. I thought they were so idiotic. Grayson’s was definitely a noble cause and the most interesting to me, even without all of the extra puzzles and riddles and secrecy. I could guess what was going to happen at the end of Grayson’s plotline, but there’s no really good way to avoid writing something predictable.

All right, now for some spoilers. Trowbridge was obviously the bad guy for Grayson—that was an easy thing. The main spoilers that I want to get into are Jameson’s because I can explain more why I did not like his point of view. It did not make sense to me that he goes to his father Ian, and his father’s like, “You play the game because you want to play the game,” and then Jameson plays the game. It didn’t make sense to me.

And then the Devil’s Mercy—it was supposed to be this huge secret society that hardly anyone ever gets into, and hardly anyone talks to the proprietor, and it was all very cultish. It didn’t feel built up enough to be as exciting as Jennifer Lynn Barnes wanted it to be. It felt like child’s play. You get into the Devil’s Mercy—Jameson and Avery easily get into it. They easily go through the games, meet the proprietor, and Jameson easily attracts his attention and gets into the ultimate game. It was too fast, it wasn’t well thought out. I don’t think it was written well, and the Devil’s Mercy didn’t feel as secret and exclusive as it should have.

In my opinion, that made none of the other games that exciting. So when he got into the ultimate game, yes, it was a little exciting, but it didn’t have the flair that I needed. I needed flair, and it just wasn’t in those games. The Devil’s Mercy was just so convenient—everything was so convenient—and I didn’t like the whole plotline. It was like, “Okay, this is really boring.” He wasn’t really working for anything.

I do like that he saved Zella instead of trying to get the prize. I thought that was nice, and I do like that he ended up actually winning. But the fact that he went through all of this just for his father—because his father said he was going to play the game—really didn’t make sense to me. And the fact that he put Avery through all of this when it was supposed to be so dangerous also didn’t make sense to me.

Now, the real spoilers—you really don’t want to hear this if you haven’t read the book. The real spoilers are: one, we knew Eve was going to come for the Hawthornes, that was a no-brainer. But two, the real, real, real one is—Alice Hawthorne is alive. Now I’m getting some serious flashbacks from when they were like, “Tobias Hawthorne is alive,” so this is like, okay, yeah, this is a big thing, but it feels like you’re just reusing your old tricks, if that makes sense.

So Jennifer Lynn Barnes definitely set the stage. There is most likely going to be another one. The way that the book ended—if you read the book and the ending—you’re like, “Oh yeah, she’s coming out with another one.” You can’t leave it that open-ended. But with Alice Hawthorne being alive, something’s gonna happen—we’re going to have another one.

But yeah, that’s the spoilers. So that’s my review for The Brothers Hawthorne. I was a little disappointed with it. I didn’t think it was as exciting as I wanted it to be, but I absolutely love Grayson now, so there’s that. And I like Jameson a little bit less. I would give it a 3.5 stars—it will probably be rounded up to four on most platforms because you can’t do half stars (don’t get me started).

If you like The Inheritance Games series, you’ll probably like revisiting the rest of the characters. I really did like seeing more from Grayson because I thought it gave him a lot more depth, a lot more character, and it gave him a little bit of a happy ending, if that makes sense. That’s all I have to say about this one. I don’t know when the next one is going to come out, I don’t know how exciting it’s going to be, but I’m going to stay hopeful.

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