Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, winner of the 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Youth/Teen Literary Work, gifts readers her third solo YA novel, The Heirs, an electrifying locked-room mystery about wealth, genius, and obsession.
Sixteen years ago, Leontes Button, a cold, calculating, and eccentric French billionaire, adopted five children from around the world. His intent was to prove that through his infamous Button Method "a genius can... be plucked from a random orphanage and made in a lab." When the toddlers arrived, Button held a "bastardize[d]" version of "Zhuazhou... A one-thousand-year-old Chinese custom... of allowing children to crawl toward their own destiny on their first birthday." He laid out "a chess piece, a violinist's bow, a gold medal, a paint brush, and a pencil."
In the present day, the teens are preparing for the 10th annual Prodigy Ball, a two-day, media-deluged showcase hosted by Button. Perdita, Bilal, Fola, and Octavius--nicknamed by journalists "the Artist, the Olympian, the Brain, the Maestro" respectively--will all be featured. Romeo, "the Failure," will not. But the media's characterizations are hardly the full story for the Button children. Fola, a chess champion, struggles with proving herself to her father and her role as secondary parent to her siblings. Octavius, who is regularly heartbroken and detached from his family, runs away to boarding school. Bilal, a "the world's youngest Olympic fencing gold medalist," has a mysterious, potentially career-ending injury. And Perdita painted her "supposed masterpiece... over two years ago" and hasn't been able to paint since. When Leontes's battered body is found the morning after the showcase, the police arrive and lock down the manor. Everyone becomes a suspect--Button's assistant, the "award-winning publicist," and all five Button children--as plentiful motives and devastating secrets are uncovered.
Àbíké-Íyímídé (Ace of Spades; Where Sleeping Girls Lie) delivers a gripping, emotional, slow-burn family drama that is also a masterful mystery. Told in four acts, the author focuses the first half on the siblings' inner lives, strained family bonds, and burdens of expectation. All five siblings have distinct voices as well as their own complicated knots of relationships. Àbíké-Íyímídé gives the second half to the investigation, exploring the roots of the Button family: nature vs. nurture, power and status, love and obsession. Teen fans of The Inheritance Games, The Umbrella Academy, or Knives Out should revel in this exhilarating mystery held in the halls of wealth and prestige. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this rousing, suspenseful locked-door YA murder mystery, five adopted teen prodigies must solve the mystery of their billionaire father's murder.