The Inheritance Games

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How did you feel about the Hawthorne brothers’ belief that Avery is just a tool that their grandfather is using to test them? Do you dislike them for treating Avery like an object, or did your sympathy for the Hawthorne brothers increase when you realized how their grandfather’s actions have affected them?

2. What was your reaction to the scene in which Grayson tells Avery that they cannot act on their feelings for one another because of Jameson? Is this an honorable thing to do? Did you feel sorry for Avery? Why or why not?

3. The Hawthornes have been raised to believe that winning is very important. Do you agree? What are the benefits and drawbacks of such a belief?

4. Many of the secrets in The Inheritance Games cause problems for either the secret-keeper or the person from whom the secret is being kept. When you decide whether or not to keep a secret in your own life, what circumstances and ethical considerations do you take into account? Have you ever regretted keeping a secret?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. How are class and wealth disparities portrayed in The Inheritance Games? In the real world, would someone like Avery be allowed to compete on an equal playing field with people like the Hawthornes?

2. Even though Tobias Hawthorne is dead before the story begins, he continues to control much of what happens in this novel. What are some of the real-world ways in which the dead continue to control the living? How is Tobias’s power over the living similar to and different from these more typical real-world examples?

3. How do Libby’s two romantic interests—Drake and Nash—demonstrate that they are more interested in what she represents than in who she is as a person? Is their mistake representative of common patriarchal structures, or are women just as likely to make this mistake? Explain your reasoning.

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. Which aspects of Hawthorne House make it a symbolically appropriate setting for the events that take place there? How does this setting help to develop the novel’s themes?

2. Tobias’s letters contain many adages. Why is this device particularly well-suited to conveying clues without giving away too much? Identify and discuss specific examples of this dynamic in Barnes’s text.

3. How does Avery’s narration allow Barnes to create tension and suspense and deploy some of the characteristic elements of mystery (e.g., clues, misdirection, and red herrings)? How would the tone and structure of the novel be impacted by a switch to a third-person narrator or to multiple first-person narrators?

4. On page 59, Jameson states, “Sometimes, things that are very different on their surface are actually the same at their core.” What is he talking about? How does this principle apply to the story’s characterizations of Avery and the Hawthorne brothers?

5. Avery’s narrative is a “rags to riches” story, while Tobias II is portrayed as being on the opposite trajectory. How do the Hawthorne brothers’ fortunes rise or fall? To what degree are their experiences dependent upon the presence (or lack) of individual talent? To what extent are overarching social structures responsible for their paths in life?