Release Date: May 12th 2014
Pages: 320
Source: review copy provided by American Book Center
Age Range: Young Adult
The Saybrooks are a wealthy aristocratic family, head of an important and famous diamond empire. The family lives in New York City and are more or less its high society. The family daughters are the heiresses, and they are in the spotlight and the media every time.
The story of The Heiresses starts when the family is attending the funeral of Steven Barnett at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Steven was an important friend of the family who has died after an accident on his yacht. But then some rumors appear that what happened might not have been an accident.
The story continues five years later, and focuses on the perfect daughter of the Saybrook family, Poppy, and her cousins Corinne, Rowan, Aster and Natasha. Corinne is preparing for her wedding which is taking place soon and will have huge media coverage
But then Poppy is found dead one day: she is seen falling from the window of her apartment building on the Upper East Side. The second mysterious death in the family. Was this an accident or was there foul play involved?
All have their own little side storyline in the book and all of them are connected due to Poppy’s death. Who knows who was with Poppy the minutes before her fall, who witnessed it happen? Why are some of the heiresses backstabbing each other and most of all, who is behind the mysterious message: One heiress down, four more to go..?
Poppy’s death is the start of dark secrets and scandals surfacing. And the four cousins are determined to find out what happened to Poppy, and why, and they find out along their journey that their lives are far more important than all the money and the diamonds they are famous of.
I was very curious about this book as I heard many good things about the other books written by Sara Shepard. Mostly my reading falls in the YA genre, but somehow I never read her famous Pretty Little Liars series, so I had to try out The Heiresses, and I am very glad I got the chance to read it. I LOVED the way it was written. The author doesn’t give any clues who might be behind the murder of Steven and Poppy. The plot is full of unexpected happenings that you’d don’t see coming. That’s what I liked most. All of the characters are in a certain way suspicious and have their dark secrets and it kept me guessing until the end. I expected it to end with a huge cliffhanger to take you along to a next installment, but luckily it wasn’t so. The end is just thrilling!! This book is a nice mix of a mystery, mixed with a very contemporary, juicy story. I liked that it was set in New York, and you can read between the lines that the author knows the city very well. I think this book is a nice crossover between YA and contemporary woman’s fiction. So if you like reading books in those genres, this is the perfect book and I am anticipating the next book in this new series already!
