Review: "The Final Gambit" by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Published August 2022 via Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
★★★

And with that I’m through the tril—what’s that? There’s one more book? Well. We’ll see.

In any case, time has passed, and Avery is nearing the end of her year-long probation period (so to speak) as billionaire heiress. Just a few more weeks, and she’ll be in full control of the money—and the power that comes with it. But there are new players in town, and they aren’t playing by the rules…

The pace picks up here, though the backstories get ever more convoluted and I had to do a fair amount of mental backtracking to remember who was who at certain points. The house gets, of course, ever bigger (among other things, we learn that there’s a 1,900-square-foot closet in one of the wings—substantially larger than the house I grew up in, and two and a half times my apartment now), and Avery finally has to think about what she might want to do with the money she’s inherited…if she survives to take control of it.

The villain is a little obvious here (or—there are two—one of whom hasn’t been introduced in other books and thus isn’t clear, but one of whom is pretty obvious in this book), but the stakes are high. I love the point Avery makes at the end (vaguesauce to avoid spoilers)—when you have that much money it is pretty much impossible to spend it (because assuming your investments are even reasonably sound, you’ll get back in interest way more than you spend), and the money instead becomes about power. And what do you do with that?

Will probably have to read book 4 now. Just, you know, on principle. How could I resist?