“Is hate really the hill you want to die on?”
If any one line in Jennifer Bene’s newest novel Inheritance surmises it would be that. The story that leads to David being challenged by that question is really what drives this novel, and it a powerful one. David is consumed by hatred of the Faure family as much as he is by love and desire for Lianna, and yet in the end one must take precedence over the other. A person cannot live in both world’s, and David becomes a living breathing testament to that. His journey to discovering that he’s got to decide what “…hill you want to die on.” is one of the biggest hooks that digs its way into you as read this novel, and it is also one of the story’s greatest strengths.
Inheritance is the companion novel to Destruction, which is Lianna and David’s ‘enemies-to-lovers’ origin story. That novel was intense, and it is highly recommended to anyone who hasn’t read it and may be unfamiliar with the backstory behind David and Lianna’s relationship. Inheritance picks up some months after where Destruction ended, and David and Lianna are working to make sense of a relationship that was borne out of a seriously difficult and complicated situation. Lianna has an opportunity presented to her that would go some ways in helping her recover a portion of her world that was ripped asunder. The problem is that it involves her family, which David has a deep-seated, all-consuming hatred for. So while Lianna deals with her demons and the potential ramifications of making a choice regarding the prospect in front of her, she has to deal with David at the same time. David is just a torn up mess. He is still dealing with fallout from his actions in Destruction, coming to terms with the fact that the woman he has fallen in love with has desires that do not align completely with his own, and ultimately making the decision as to which is more important to him in the long run. His demons equally come into play here, especially where it concerns his sexual dynamic with Lianna, and trying to factor that into everything else going on between them. To say he is conflicted would be an understatement by many magnitudes.
I have spent a lot of time focusing on David, and for me that is because his story in the novel was the one that resonated deeply with me. This is not to diminish Lianna’s impact on the novel, but everything that David agonizes about was just so well presented, and so incredibly well fleshed out that I was really drawn to him as a character. The questions he ends up forced to confront, the challenges he ends up having to face, and ultimately the decisions he makes are not sketched in broad strokes and resolved easily. The author pulls you into his world, his thoughts, his struggle to come to grips with everything that is facing him, and at no point does she take the easy way out. Which makes reading his story so gripping and engaging, because there is nothing formulaic about what he goes through. He agonizes over things, even when to the reader the choice he should make is clear and obvious. There are people, including Lianna herself, who advise him what he should do, and yet—like so many of us—he sometimes ignores that advice and chooses to first go down his own path, even if it only makes things that much more difficult for him. David is an extremely complex and nuanced character in Inheritance, and for me that was probably one of the greatest strengths and pleasures that I took away from the book. This is not to say that Lianna’s story is not without its own depth, because that is not true. Her story is powerful in its own right, but for this reader it was David’s story that really carried me through page after page, and there were points where I wanted alternately to smack him upside the head, and then hug him for what he does. One final note in regards to David; I respected greatly that the author made a conscious decision not to make him SuperDom or UltraBadBoy. I was afraid that might be the case, but it was completely unfounded. David really is just a flawed human being. He is struggling to come to terms with so many things, and he makes some dumb decisions at certain points, which makes him so much more than what could easily have been a tropish ‘SuperDude – Lover’ character. He is completely relatable, which was so refreshing.
If there was a weak point to this novel it was a glaring one to me, and limited to one section. There is a flashback dream sequence which I felt was unnecessary. As I read through it I felt as if it was shoe-horned in place by the author because there was some concern on her part that people had not picked up enough clues from the previous portions of the book to understand the place and past where David was coming from. I felt this was unneeded, and reading through this section was off-putting to me. It was almost as if the author wasn’t giving the reader enough credit for catching all the details that had been provided prior to that. It was a TL;DR synopsis that I felt could easily have been parceled out in other portions of the novel, but since it was presented as a whole I felt it was being forced upon me to make sure I understood what David had gone through, when that was already perfectly clear to me. This being said, it is not that this section is poorly written, or doesn’t provide some additional details, but the way in which those details were presented I believe could have been done in a different and less ‘pushy’ way. Again, it was nothing, however, that I would say was a great detriment to the novel as a whole.
Inheritance is above all other things, a story. A beautifully rendered, plot driven story of two people finding their way in a burgeoning relationship that is being built on a foundation based on the rubble of past lives. It is not a sketch, or a series of random sex scenes tacked together with a barely there plot. This is a novel that is going to make you think, and feel, and empathize with the characters within it. Of course there are the signature Jennifer Bene hot and sexy scenes, and some incredible ones to boot! But what is really going to make you stop and think, and remember this novel long after you have finished it, are the interactions between Lianna and David. The story of how they build a life together after everything they went through in Destruction. How they decide which hill to stand on.
Together.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2019
- Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2020
- Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
- EmmanuelleReviewed in France on January 21, 2020
I'm waiting for book 3 ! Vivement la suite !
- Louise H - "Life In The Book Lane" Book ReviewsReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2019
Love, love, loved this story
