First Chapter, First Paragraph: Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Socrates Book Reviews where participants share the first paragraph of one of the books that they are currently reading, have read or are planning to read. According to Socrates, this meme is guaranteed to increase your TBR 🙂
This week, I am participating with The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins (published 2024):
First Chapter, First Paragraph:
It would probably shock the average American to learn just how little we know about those who go missing in the wilder parts of this great nation of ours. A tangled knot of jurisdictions and separate government agencies means that there is no singular place to collect that data, no easily searched resource that tells us just how many of our fellow citizens vanish into the thick forests of the Appalachians, the cold, stony reaches of the Rocky Mountains, the dense mists of the Pacific Northwest. And when someone is swallowed up by these elemental places, our brains struggle with the sheer vastness of both the land itself and the overwhelming myriad of possibilities. Did they vanish on purpose, seeking some kind of freedom from our plugged-in, switched-on existence? Was it an accident? If so, what kind? After all, there are so many things that can kill you once you've left well-traveled paths. Something as simple as a broken shoelace can lead to a stumble which becomes a fall, hands scrabbling over slippery rock. Wild animals are not the lovable cartoons we grew up with, but genuine threats. Did the missing person meet up with one, finding themselves plunged into the primal nightmare of becoming a food source?
On Hardcover:
When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.
But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money—and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.
Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.
Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam's estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.
But Ruby's plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what's written in a will—and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.
What do you think? Would you read this one?
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