Inherit midnight by Kate Kae Myers
Bloomsbury, 2015. ISBN 9781619639362
(Age: 12+) Highly recommended. Myers brings to life a wonderful
lesson in the importance of family history. Describing a set of
challenges created to find the most worthy heir to the VanDemere
fortune, Avery's grandmother shows her cunning as her challenges
about family history not only show her who is the most worthy, but
act to draw the family together through a gruelling set of
challenges which reveal more and more about her heir's
characteristics.
After escaping from St. Frederick's, a prison-like boarding school,
Avery becomes an unwilling participant in her grandmother's heritage
and inheritance game. Being an only child and the result of a family
scandal, all Avery ever wanted was to escape the VanDemere's
constant degradation of her. With the help of Riley Tate, the
lawyer's son who came to fetch her, Avery discovers that to avoid
returning to the school she must participate in the competition. Mr.
Tate gives her the added motivation she needs by revealing that her
mother, the Croatian nanny, is alive and well. In order to get the
letters that her mother had been sending, Avery must win the
competition and retain Mr. Tate's law firm. With Riley as chaperone
Avery travels across three continents to complete seven challenges.
Together they explore diamond mines and re-enact family history to
prove she has all the treasured traits associated with the VanDemere
name. Avery has both advantages and disadvantages in the
competition; she lives in the family mansion, but she is the most
despised of all her cousins. With each determined to inherit the
fortune and knock her out if they can, the game is, for Avery, also
a test of survival.
I would highly recommend for lovers of the adventure-quest tale,
twelve and up. More than anything this is about a struggle against
the odds, will Avery come out on top, proving herself better than
her uncles and cousins? Or will she fail on the very first test and
be sent back to the horrors of St. Frederick's? The novel is well
written and completely engrossing from start to finish.
Kayla Gaskell