61 pages • 2-hour read
Glorious Rivals
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Background
Series Context: The World of The Inheritance Games
Glorious Rivals is the second novel in The Grandest Game trilogy, a spin-off of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s #1 New York Times bestselling trilogy, The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, The Hawthorne Legacy, and The Final Gambit). This series, along with other related books in the universe, including The Brothers Hawthorne, establishes the world of the ultra-wealthy Hawthorne family, whose lives are defined by the intricate puzzles, riddles, and high-stakes competitions designed by the late patriarch, Tobias Hawthorne.
The original trilogy follows Avery Grambs, a teenager who unexpectedly inherits the Hawthorne fortune and must solve a series of elaborate puzzles to claim it, navigating a complex web of family secrets and rivalries with Tobias’s four grandsons: Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander. This foundational narrative establishes the family’s immense resources, their penchant for theatrical and intellectually demanding games, and the core personalities of the Hawthorne brothers.
The Grandest Game trilogy begins with The Grandest Game (2024). Avery Grambs is the architect of the Grandest Game, a series of puzzles designed to echo her own experience in The Inheritance Game series, executed with the help of her four brothers: Nash, Jameson, Grayson, and Xander Hawthorne. Seven contestants either win their spot in the game or are invited by Avery to compete: Lyra Kane, Brady Daniels, Odette Morales, Knox Landry, Savannah and Gigi Grayson, and Rohan. In addition, Avery reveals that, without his knowledge, she has entered her brother, Grayson Hawthorne, into the competition. Whoever wins the game will take home $26 million.
Alliances quickly form amongst the competitors: Lyra, Grayson, and Odette; Savannah and Rohan; and Gigi, Brady, and Knox team up to solve a series of puzzles. As the game continues, the true motivations and allegiances of some of the characters are revealed: Brady is determined to win to learn more about the disappearance of his first love, Calla Thorpe; Lyra is searching for answers about her father’s death; Rohan wants the money so that he can become Proprietor of secret society The Devil’s Mercy; and Savannah is determined to win to avenge her own father’s death, allegedly by Avery’s hands. By the end of the novel, Lyra and Grayson are flirting with a romantic relationship, as are Savannah and Rohan. Gigi, Brady, and Knox’s team has lost, and in the process, Brady has revealed that he is willing to sacrifice his teammates to continue in the contest. Odette gives her spot to Gigi, keeping her in the game, but in the final chapter, Gigi is kidnapped by a mysterious man.
Genre Context: Blending Puzzle Mystery and Young Adult Romance
Glorious Rivals blends the intellectual challenges of a puzzle-based mystery with the emotional intensity of young adult (YA) romance. This hybrid genre has gained significant traction in contemporary YA publishing, appealing to readers who enjoy both intricate plotting and deep character development. The puzzle mystery subgenre, popularized by classic authors like Agatha Christie with And Then There Were None and updated with entries like Stuart Turton’s The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, prioritizes logic and deduction. Rather than focusing on police work, the narrative challenges its characters—and by extension, the reader—to solve a series of interconnected riddles, codes, and logical tests.
In Glorious Rivals, this is evident in the structure of the Grandest Game, where players must decipher clues, like the golden dart puzzle, to determine the location of the next puzzle. This intellectual framework is interwoven with a YA romance plot, which centers on the intense and often fraught relationships between its young protagonists. The novel employs the popular rivals-to-lovers trope, developing complex dynamics between Lyra and Grayson, and Savannah and Rohan. Their relationships are characterized by sharp banter, underlying tension, and moments of vulnerability, as when Lyra reflects that “kissing Grayson Hawthorne felt like stepping out of time” (3). The high-stakes competition amplifies the romantic tension, forcing characters into alliances and confrontations that test their loyalties and feelings. By combining these genres, the novel uses the puzzle-driven plot to create a high-pressure environment that both complicates and accelerates the development of its central romance, making each solved clue and shared glance equally significant.
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