The Inheritance by JoAnn Ross – Review & Excerpt

The Inheritance by JoAnn Ross – Review & Excerpt

 

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Description:
With a dramatic WWII love story woven throughout, JoAnn Ross’s women’s fiction debut is a generational saga full of sisterly affection and rivalry, perfect for fans of Susan Wiggs, Mary Alice Monroe and Lisa Wingate.

When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard—and for a family they didn’t ask for.

After a successful career as a child TV star, Tess is, for the first time in her life, suffering from a serious identity crisis, and renewed resentment around losing her father all over again.

Charlotte, brought up to be a proper Southern wife, gave up her own career to support her husband’s political ambitions. On the worst day of her life, she discovers her beloved father has died, she has two sisters she never knew about, and her husband has fallen in love with another woman.

Natalie, daughter of Jack’s longtime mistress, has always known about her half sisters. And she can’t help feeling that when Tess and Charlotte find out, they’ll resent her for being the daughter their father kept.

As the sisters reluctantly gather at the Maison de Madeleine to deal with their father’s final wishes, they become enchanted by the legacy they’ve inherited, and by their grandmother’s rich stories of life in WWII France and the wounded American soldier who would ultimately influence all their lives.

 

 

Review:

The Inheritance by JoAnn Ross is a stand alone novel.  At the start, we meet Jackson Swann, a famous photographer, who spent his whole life going to dangerous sites to take dark and morbid photos.  Jackson is home at the family estate, knowing he is in the last days of his life due to a cancer battle.  Jackson works with his friend and manager of the estate and vineyard, Gideon to finalize a will.

A short time later, upon Jackson’s death, the family lawyer meets separately with Jackson’s three daughters from different mothers, and neither knowing anything about each other.  With the will to be read, the lawyer pushes each daughter to attend the reading of the will at the estate, Maison de Madeleine, in Aberdeen, Oregon.

First, we meet Tess, the oldest daughter, who hasn’t seen her father all these years, and resents him.  She is a famous tv actress and now a well-known author. Wanting nothing to do with the estate, she reluctantly gives in to learn more about her father and her newly found half-sisters.

Charlotte, who is married and considered a Southern Belle, but at the same time the lawyer advises her to come to the estate, she learns her husband has been cheating on her.  When she confronts her husband, he tells the truth, and says he loves the other woman.  Charlotte decides to leave and see what the inheritance and her sisters are like.

Natalie, the youngest daughter, is the only one who has seen her father often, as he was living with them for many years.   She too is a famous photographer like her father, but her photos are of more bright and pleasant things.

When the girls arrive separately, they will meet their grandmother, who is in her nineties.  The story line will revolve around the girls meeting each other, and learning all about their grandmother’s rich stories of life in WWII France and the wounded American soldier who would ultimately influence all their lives.  They learn quickly about the terms of the will, which states that the 3 sisters must stay at Chateau de Madeleine through the next harvest before inheriting the business.  The most valuable piece of the inheritance is the winery, which has had very successful wines, and a large part of the inheritance includes this.

What follows is an emotional story line, as we watch the sisters begin to accept each other, as well as the men who become part of their lives.  Each of the sisters manage to rise up to get past some personal issues, especially acknowledging each other’s as true sisters. Gideon was a great addition, as he also was part of the inheritance, as he was the one who would keep the winery going, and I loved him and Tess together.  The grandmother’s telling of the past during the war in France, was very well done. I also loved the grandmother, Madeleine.

The Inheritance was a wonderful, heartwarming story of love, forgiveness and happiness.  The Inheritance was very well written by JoAnn Ross. I suggest to read this book.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher

 

 

Prologue

Aberdeen, Oregon

Conflict photographer Jackson Swann had traveled to dark and deadly places in the world most people would never see. Nor want to. Along with dodging bullets and mortars, he’d survived a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, gotten shot mere inches from his heart in Niger and been stung by a death-stalker scorpion while embedded with the French Foreign Legion in Mali.
Some of those who’d worked with him over the decades had called him reckless. Rash. Dangerous. Over late-night beers or whatever else passed as liquor in whatever country they’d all swarmed to, other photographers and foreign journalists would argue about whether that bastard Jackson Swann had a death wish or merely considered himself invincible.
He did, after all, rush into high-octane situations no sane person would ever consider, and even when the shit hit the fan, somehow, he’d come out alive and be on the move again. Chasing the next war or crisis like a drug addict chased a high. The truth was that Jack had never believed himself to be im-mortal. Still, as he looked out over the peaceful view of rolling hills, the cherry trees wearing their spring profusion of pink blossoms, and acres of vineyards, he found it ironic that after having evaded the Grim Reaper so many times over so many decades, it was an aggressive and rapidly spreading lung cancer that was going to kill him.
Which was why he was here, sitting on the terraced patio of Chateau de Madeleine, the towering gray stone house that his father, Robert Swann, had built for his beloved war bride, Madeleine, to ease her homesickness. Oregon’s Willamette Valley was a beautiful place. But it was not Madeleine’s child-hood home in France’s Burgundy region where much of her family still lived.
Family. Jack understood that to many, the American dream featured a cookie-cutter suburban house, a green lawn you had to mow every weekend, a white picket fence, happy, well-fed kids and a mutt who’d greet him with unrestrained canine glee whenever he returned home from work. It wasn’t a bad dream. But it wasn’t, and never would be, his dream.
How could it be with the survivor’s guilt that shadowed him like a tribe of moaning ghosts? Although he’d never been all that introspective, Jack realized that the moral dilemma he’d experienced every time he’d had to force himself to re-main emotionally removed from the bloody scenes of chaos and death he was viewing through the lens of his camera had left him too broken to feel, or even behave like a normal human being.
Ten years ago, after his strong, robust father died of a sudden heart attack while fly-fishing, Jack had inherited the winery with his mother, who’d professed no interest in the day-to-day running of the family business. After signing over control of the winery to him, and declaring the rambling house too large for one woman, Madeleine Swann had moved into the guesthouse next to the garden she’d begun her first year in Oregon. A garden that supplied the vegetables and herbs she used for cooking many of the French meals she’d grown up with.
His father’s death had left Jack in charge of two hundred and sixty acres of vineyards and twenty acres of orchards. Not wanting, nor able, to give up his wanderlust ways to settle down and become a farmer of grapes and cherries, Jack had hired Gideon Byrne, a recent widower with a five-year-old daughter, away from a Napa winery to serve as both manager and vintner.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call them?” Gideon, walking toward him, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses, asked not for the first time over the past weeks.
“The only reason that Tess would want to see me would be to wave me off to hell.” In the same way he’d never softened the impact of his photos, Jack never minced words nor romanticized his life. There would be no dramatic scenes with his three daughters—all now grown women with lives of their own—hovering over his deathbed.
“Have you considered that she might want to have an opportunity to talk with you? If for no other reason to ask—”
“Why I deserted her before her second birthday and never looked back? I’m sure her mother’s told her own version of the story, and the truth is that the answers are too damn complicated and the time too long past for that discussion.” It was also too late for redemption.
Jack doubted his eldest daughter would give a damn even if he could’ve tried to explain. She’d have no way of knowing that he’d kept track of her all these years, blaming himself when she’d spiraled out of control so publicly during her late teens and early twenties. Perhaps, if she’d had a father who came home every night for dinner, she would have had a more normal, stable life than the Hollywood hurricane her mother had thrown her into before her third birthday.
Bygones, he reminded himself. Anything he might say to his firstborn would be too little, too late. Tess had no reason to travel to Oregon for his sake, but hopefully, once he was gone, curiosity would get the better of her. His girls should know each other. It was long past time.
“Charlotte, then,” Gideon pressed. “You and Blanche are still technically married.”
“Technically being the operative word.” The decades-long separation from his Southern socialite wife had always suited them both just fine. According to their prenuptial agreement, Blanche would continue to live her privileged life in Charleston, without being saddled with a full-time live-in husband, who’d seldom be around at any rate. Divorce, she’d informed him, was not an option. And if she had discreet affairs from time to time, who would blame her? Certainly not him.
“That’s no reason not to give Charlotte an opportunity to say goodbye. How many times have you seen her since she went to college? Maybe twice a year?”
“You’re pushing again,” Jack shot back. Hell, you’d think a guy would be allowed to die in peace without Jiminy Cricket sitting on his shoulder. “Though of the three of them, Char-lotte will probably be the most hurt,” he allowed.
His middle daughter had always been a sweet girl, running into his arms, hair flying behind her like a bright gold flag to give her daddy some “sugar”—big wet kisses on those rare occasions he’d wind his way back to Charleston. Or drop by Savannah to take her out to dinner while she’d been attending The Savannah School of Art and Design.
“The girl doesn’t possess Blanche’s steel magnolia strength.”
Having grown up with a mother who could find fault in the smallest of things, Charlotte was a people pleaser, and that part of her personality would kick into high gear whenever he rolled into the city. “And, call me a coward, but I’d just as soon not be around when her pretty, delusional world comes crashing down around her.” He suspected there were those in his daughter’s rarified social circle who knew the secret that the Charleston PI he’d kept on retainer hadn’t had any trouble uncovering.
“How about Natalie?” Gideon continued to press. “She doesn’t have any reason to be pissed at you. But I’ll bet she will be if you die without a word of warning. Especially after losing her mother last year.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t want to put her through this.”
He’d met Josette Seurat, the ebony-haired, dark-eyed French Jamaican mother of his youngest daughter, when she’d been singing in a club in the spirited Oberkampf district of Paris’s eleventh arrondissement. He’d fallen instantly, and by the next morning Jack knew that not only was the woman he’d spent the night having hot sex with his first true love, she was also the only woman he’d ever love. Although they’d never married, they’d become a couple, while still allowing space for each other to maintain their own individual lives, for twenty-six years. And for all those years, despite temptation from beautiful women all over the globe, Jack had remained faithful. He’d never had a single doubt that Josette had, as well.
With Josette having been so full of life, her sudden death from a brain embolism had hit hard. Although Jack had im-mediately flown to Paris from Syria to attend the funeral at a church built during the reign of Napoleon III, he’d been too deep in his own grief, and suffering fatigue—which, rather than jet lag, as he’d assumed, had turned out to be cancer—to provide the emotional support and comfort his third daughter had deserved.
“Josette’s death is the main reason I’m not going to drag Natalie here to watch me die. And you might as well quit playing all the guilt cards because I’m as sure of my decision as I was yesterday. And the day before that. And every other time over the past weeks you’ve brought it up. Bad enough you coerced me into making those damn videos. Like I’m some documentary maker.”
To Jack’s mind, documentary filmmakers were storytellers who hadn’t bothered to learn to edit. How hard was it to spend anywhere from two to ten hours telling a story he could capture in one single, perfectly timed photograph?
“The total length of all three of them is only twenty minutes,” Gideon said equably.
There were times when Jack considered that the man had the patience of a saint. Which was probably necessary when you’d chosen to spend your life watching grapes grow, then waiting years before the wine you’d made from those grapes was ready to drink. Without Gideon Byrne to run this place, Jack probably would have sold it off to one of the neighboring vineyards years ago, with the caveat that his mother would be free to keep the guesthouse, along with the larger, showier one that carried her name. Had he done that he would have ended up regretting not having a thriving legacy to pass on to his daughters.
“The total time works out to less than ten minutes a daughter. Which doesn’t exactly come close to a Ken Burns series,” Gideon pointed out.
“I liked Burns’s baseball one,” Jack admitted reluctantly. “And the one on country music. But hell, it should’ve been good, given that he took eight years to make it.”
Jack’s first Pulitzer had admittedly been a stroke of luck, being in the right place at the right time. More care had gone into achieving the perfect photos for other awards, but while he admired Burns’s work, he’d never have the patience to spend that much time on a project. His French mother had claimed he’d been born a pierre roulante—rolling stone—al-ways needing to be on the move. Which wasn’t conducive to family life, which is why both his first and second marriages had failed. Because he could never be the husband either of his very different wives had expected.
“Do you believe in life after death?” he asked.
Gideon took his time to answer, looking out over the vine-yards. “I like to think so. Having lost Becky too soon, it’d be nice to believe we’ll connect again, somewhere, somehow.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, there are days that I think this might be our only shot.”
“Josette came again last night.”
“You must have enjoyed that.”
“I always do.”

Excerpted from The Inheritance by JoAnn Ross, Copyright © 2021 by JoAnn Ross. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

 

 

 



New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author JoAnn Ross has been published in twenty-seven countries. The author of over 100 novels, JoAnn lives with her husband and many rescue pets — who pretty much rule the house — in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Social Links:
Author Website
Facebook: @JoAnnRossbooks
Instagram: @JoAnnRossBooks
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The Inheritance by Olivia Mayfield – a Review

The Inheritance by Olivia Mayfield – a Review

 

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Description:

Maggie Willings knew that returning home for her estranged grandfather’s funeral would not be easy, but she never expected the reading of his will to be the most difficult part. It turns out her grandfather named four people beneficiaries to his vast estate—Maggie, her brother Robert, her ex-boyfriend Andrew, and her grandfather’s far-too-young girlfriend Bethany. But only one of them will win his millions: whoever finds out the truth about what happened to Maggie’s younger sister Cassandra, who vanished over eight years ago.

As her grandfather’s strange challenge pits Maggie against those nearest to her, she’s reluctant to drag up painful memories of her sister and distracted by a lingering attraction to Andrew. But as she delves deeper into her sister’s mysterious vanishing, she begins to discover that each of the contestants has dangerous secrets to hide—and with ten million dollars on the line, no one, not even those she loves most, can be trusted…

 

Review:

The Inheritance by Olivia Mayfield was first published as a 6 part serial. It has just been released as a full novel, with all the parts together as one book. I am not a big serial fan, so I was very happy to have been able to read it as one book. I must say, this was one helluva book written so well by Mayfield, who is totally new to me. I will gladly read any new book by Mayfield.

The Inheritance begins with our heroine Maggie Willings returning home after a long absence for her grandfather’s funeral. She left home long ago after the disappearance of her younger sister, who to this day has never been found. To Maggie’s shock, as she listens to her grandfathers will being read, his fortune is now up for grabs to the person who discovers what really happened to her sister Cassandra. Besides Maggie, 3 other people are to take part in this competition of finding the truth, and winning the 10 million dollar prize; Robert, is Maggie’s older other; Bethany, her ex best friend; and Andrew, the young man who broke her heart before she left town.

This story got your attention immediately, and never let go. It was wonderful mystery that kept you guessing every step of the way. I loved Maggie, who was the main character, as we watched through her POV. Everyone and more, were suspects, with so many twists and surprises.   Throughout the book, the suspense intensified, as we had to know….What happened to Cassandra? Is she dead or alive?

Maggie doesn’t know who to trust, as her brother refuses to work with her, and she hates Bethany. Only Andrew wanted to work with her to solve the mystery, and he claimed that he wasn’t interested in the money. Poor Maggie, she still finds herself with feelings for Andrew, but can she trust him?

Maggie is determined to do everything she can to find out what happened that night when Cassandra disappeared, and enlists not only Andrew, but a former friend, who is now a cop. Along the way, as she tries to get information from the people who saw Cassandra last, the danger escalates and the excitement builds. Memories are sometimes best left alone, but as we get deeper and deeper, the plot thickens, with many of those twists coming quickly, as we race to the climax.

While we are caught up in the mystery and suspense, Maggie and Andrew rekindle their romance and it is very nicely done. Their chemistry was steaming hot, as was the sex scenes. The Inheritance was a fantastic, exciting and intriguing storyline. I am so glad I read this book in full, as I am not sure I could have handled waiting for the next book in a serial format. If you like a well done mystery, excitement, suspense, and a very nice romance, look no further than The Inheritance, which was so very well written by Olivia Mayfield.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher

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