A Deadly Inheritance by Kelley ArmstrongMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thanks to Netgalley and Tundra for the pre-release copy of Kelley Armstrong's A Deadly Inheritance. Below you'll find my honest review.
This is my first of Kelley Armstrong's YA novels. I've read a huge chunk of her adult catalogue and she's one of my insta-buy authors, so I figured it was time to give the YAs a shot when I saw this one available for request on Netgalley.
I'm glad I did. This was a solid YA mystery with lots of twists and turns and (mostly) believable sleuthing by the main characters. I loved the setting and the characters, and the main character wasn't insufferable like in so many YA stories.
But it also wasn't perfect. There were a few things that felt out of place for teenagers in today's world like mentions of "smelling his aftershave" (I'm 41 and know NO adults that use aftershave now, so would a teenage boy be using it? I dunno, but it felt off to me) or "layaway plans" (I had to net-search to even see if there are stores left that offer layaway still! Maybe this is sign of my privilege to never having had to use layaway, I guess?).
And the biggest thing I have to gripe about is the romance aspect. I'm pretty danged liberal, and I'm not judgmental of weird relationships between consenting adults, but having a group of teenagers basically be in a throuple after knowing each other for a few months was odd. It wouldn't have even been a problem for me at all if it wasn't made such a huge focus, distracting from the mystery. Kudos to Armstrong for showing that not all relationships have to meet some traditional guidelines, but it shouldn't be getting in the way of the main plot of the novel.
All in all, I really enjoyed it and will definitely read more of Armstrong's YA back catalogue. She's one of my top fave authors.
Highly recommended for fans of Inheritance Games, Truly Devious, YA dark academia, mysteries, secret societies, etc.
Three and a half stars rounded up to four.
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