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Spoilers Beyond This Point

“For one, Cam doesn’t even have social media, and for another, there’s always been something about him––about us––that feels private. Special, even. It’s been that way from the moment we met.”

The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins

First, a recap of Ruby’s life before she adopted Cam. Ruby was kidnapped as a toddler while out for a picnic lunch. She was missing for almost a year before a man named Jimmy Darnall showed up with toddler Ruby and apologized. He claimed to have been working on the house, seen Ruby, and realized she resembled his dead daughter. Back in Alabama, his wife had been grieving her daughter’s death, and he thought bringing Ruby to her would fix everything. He returned Ruby to her family and was immediately put in jail. And that would be weird if that was the only thing to happen to Ruby. But no. Over the course of the book, we get several letters written by Ruby that confess secrets about each of her four marriages. And the confession each time is that she killed the husband. (Sorry to spoil the twists so fast, but it’s just insane). And after the fourth husband’s death, Ruby realizes she needs to put some good karma into the world and adopts Camden.

Now, on to the present. Ruby is dead. Cam successfully ignores that fact for a couple years, but once his uncle Howell dies, his hand is forced and he agrees to visit the family mansion. He hasn’t really shared much of his past with Jules, so she’s learning on the go. We learn that Jules works at a living history farm, while Cam is a teacher. They’re making ends meet … kind of. But Cam is still resolute that he does not want anything to do with the McTavish fortune. He has accepted that he will have to return to the McTavish mansion to finalize his decisions, but is insistent that he and Jules will then be returning to Colorado.

When Jules and Cam arrive, Jules is immediately smitten with the estate. After greeting the remaining McTavish family members, Cam gives Jules a quick tour and they settle into a routine. For the next week or so, Cam does repairs around the house and Jules putters around the house. They are also forced to spend time with the three family members: Nelle, Ben, and Libby. Nelle is Ruby’s younger sister, and was Howell’s mother. Ben and Libby are Howell’s kids, with Ben handling most of the family business and their estate and Libby running a small store in town (aka an influencer with money).  Cam is in between the two in age, and it’s clear that their shared adolescence is a sore spot for all three.

“Me on that trail, Ben revealing I was the reason he asked Camden to come home. Yes, I want this house. And yes, I’m not the kind of person who willingly turns their back on hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins

The first big reveal is that Jules was working with Ben to convince Cam to come home. She knew about the big mansion and the bigger bank account, and decided to take control of the situation. Ben wants Cam to share the inheritance, and Jules is letting that fantasy continue as long as possible so she can get the help she needs. However, it’s clear that Ben distrusts Jules just as much as she does him, and they’re both trying to win Cam over for their causes. Jules wants to keep the entire inheritance for her and Cam, while Ben wants to kick Cam out of the inheritance completely.

“‘They’re going to tell me,’ I say, surprising myself with how calm I sound, ‘that the woman I knew—that we all knew—as Ruby McTavish wasn’t Ruby at all.’”

The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins

The middle third of the story is mostly just push and pull between the family, Camden, and Jules. But once we hit the final act, things start getting crazy. Ruby getting kidnapped was always really weird, especially because she was brought back like 10 months later. At some point, Howell and Nelle decided to do a secret DNA test on Ruby to determine if she was a legitimate heir to the McTavish fortune. Ruby intercepted their results and replaced it with a positive, saying she was a McTavish. But the original test results said that she was definitively not a McTavish, and worse, she was the daughter of the man who had “returned” her. Ruby really had disappeared, but the McTavish family was willing to pay to get any version of her back. They made a plan with Jimmy Darnall to help him escape jail after bringing “Ruby” and would pay him handsomely. But of course, after obtaining the toddler, they arranged for Jimmy’s death instead. His wife did receive money for her child, which she refused to ever touch.

Our Ruby Mctavish, really a Darnall, reveals the truth to Cam when he’s a teenager. He agrees to keep her secret because there’s no reason not to. And now in the present, Ben tries to surprise Cam by making the reveal himself. Unfortunately for the McTavish family, Ruby had prepared well and made sure her will was built around her genealogy.

This was the twist that made the book for me. Pretty much every fact in the story is up for interpretation, and this was the most satisfying reveal. There’s so much riding on it, and it’s an absolutely insane plot point.

“‘I knew she was dead when I opened the door,’ he goes on, and he turns, our gazes meeting, and I want to tell him to stop there, not to say the next part, the part that he won’t be able to take back, the part I won’t be able to unhear. ‘I knew. Because I killed her.’”

The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins

Things start going from kooky-crazy to full-on crazy-crazy. Ben is furious that Cam already knew about Ruby’s biological parents and didn’t immediately turn over the entire inheritance. There’s a lot of fighting, and Ben accuses Cam of murdering Ruby. Things go from 70 to 100 and everyone’s screaming. They all eventually calm down and retire for the night. The next morning there’s an ambulance at the house, taking away Nelle’s body. She’d died of an apparent heart attack.

At this point, Cam confesses to Jules that he didn’t kill Ruby so much as he didn’t save her. Cam had been trying to move away for months, and Ruby wouldn’t let him. One night, they had a big fight about it, and he left. When he came home, he discovered that Ruby had purposely overdosed on pills. She gave him two options: call the police and prove that he’s a better person than anyone in the McTavish family, or let her die and prove he’s a McTavish through and through. Cam unplugs the phone and sits on the opposite side of the room, watching her die. He then sneaks out of the house and returns later that evening, giving himself an alibi.

Jules is obviously rocked by his confession, but quickly realizes you can’t blame a teenager for reacting that way after the life he’s had. She comforts him, then shows him all the letters from Ruby she’d found. You know, the murder confession ones. And Jules is confused, because she thought all the letters were for Cam, but in the final letter, Ruby lets the recipient know how excited she is for them to meet Cam. 

They take time together to process everything they learn, then Cam leaves to get things taken care of before they leave. Jules starts packing, but then sneaks into Ruby’s office where she’d shown Cam the letters she found. Ben confronts her then, with the final letter, that Jules had not shown Cam. Ben and Jules fight, and the office catches on fire. As Cam returns, the entire mansion is in flames. Jules barely made it out alive, but Ben and Libby are nowhere to be found. Turns out Ben got trapped in the office and Libby was passed out from a sleeping pill, so they both died in the fire.

Jules confesses to us, not Cam, that she’s a Darnall. Ruby got in contact with her years ago and set a plan into motion to give the McTavish fortune to the Darnalls. Jules had all the information on Cam from Ruby, and was able to find him right away. And Jules has done everything she can to get the money, including probably killing Nelle.

“That I was waiting to see what she’d do. If Ruby had put her up to this, that plan had to be fucking toast now, given that Ruby was dead.”

The Heiress, Rachel Hawkins

Final twist! Cam knew about Jules. Not the whole time, but for quite a while. 

This book was a rollercoaster that only went up, and the downward spiral was me after I finished it. It’s the kind of mystery where everything that happens seems fine and logistically possible purely because the characters are all terrible people. Like of course the millionaires are killing each other for a bigger inheritance. Of course the millionaires BOUGHT A TODDLER. Of course it’s weird. And honestly, they deserve everything they get. If you’re looking for a reality-based story, too bad. If you’re looking for a reality-TV story, you’ve found it.