The Hawthorne Legacy recap

Knowing that Toby Hawthorne survived the fire that supposedly killed him, Avery and the Hawthorne brothers set out to find him, using the methods the old man drilled into his grandsons. The archives give up the story the family buried: Toby was taken in as an infant rather than born a Hawthorne, found out as a young man, and vanished after a fire on the family's private island killed several of his friends, spending the next twenty years unnamed and unfound. Somewhere in those years he knew Avery's mother, which is where the answer to why Avery was chosen begins. While Grayson tracks down his own biological father, Sheffield Grayson, and is refused, new attempts are made on Avery's life and it becomes clear that someone else is hunting Toby too. The two searches turn out to be one: Sheffield Grayson has taken Toby and has been trying to kill Avery. The rescue ends with Sheffield Grayson dead and the family concealing it, Toby free but unwilling to step back into the Hawthorne name, and a stranger arriving at the gates who looks exactly like Emily Laughlin.

Avery Kylie Grambs was living hand to mouth in Connecticut when a Texas law firm summoned her to the reading of the will of Tobias Hawthorne, a billionaire she had never met, who left her almost his entire fortune on the condition that she live in Hawthorne House for a year. His daughters Zara and Skye and his four grandsons, Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander, were left with almost nothing. Raised on their grandfather's puzzles, the brothers assumed Avery was the old man's final game, and Jameson set out with her to solve it, working through a mansion full of hidden passages and a family history nobody would discuss: the death of Emily Laughlin, whom both Grayson and Jameson had loved, and the fire on the family's private island that was believed to have killed Tobias Hawthorne's only son, Toby. Avery survived a shooting on the grounds and a fire in her own wing, both arranged by Skye Hawthorne through Libby's former boyfriend, who was killed and left Skye facing arrest. The trail ended in a discovery rather than an answer: Toby Hawthorne is alive, and Avery had unknowingly been playing chess every morning with him, an old man she knew only as Harry. Why she was chosen is still unexplained, and the link appears to run through her dead mother.

Avery is still living at Hawthorne House with Libby, the brothers, and a security detail, and finding Toby Hawthorne is now the only thing that matters to her. His usual corner in Connecticut is empty and the trail is cold, so she and the Hawthornes fall back on the way their grandfather taught them to think and start hunting for whatever the old man left behind about his son. Alisa manages the public side of an heiress the press will not leave alone, Oren manages the risk, and the family still obliged to share the house settles into an uneasy truce. Grayson, raised to run an empire and now with nothing to run, holds himself apart from Avery on principle. Jameson picks the game back up with her.

The search runs into the fact that Tobias Hawthorne spent decades making sure nobody could follow him without his permission. Avery and the brothers work through his study, his archives, and the parts of the house they were never allowed into as children, and find that his interest in Toby never stopped. Meanwhile the household fills up: Max comes to stay, Nash and Libby spend more time together than either will admit, and Rebecca Laughlin and Thea Calligaris are pulled back into the brothers' orbit. Grayson starts a search of his own for the father he has never met, and Avery keeps circling her own mother, who knew Toby and who once said she had a secret about the day Avery was born.

The archives give up what the family spent twenty years burying. Toby was not born a Hawthorne: he was taken in as an infant, raised as Tobias Hawthorne's son, and told nothing until he worked it out for himself as a young man. Soon afterward came the fire on the family's private island, which killed several of his friends and was believed to have killed him too. What Avery and the brothers find in his old rooms and papers is a young man coming apart and a father who covered the whole thing over rather than face it. The discovery changes what the search is for: not simply a missing man, but the reason a billionaire spent the rest of his life quietly looking for him.

Piece by piece Avery reconstructs the twenty years Toby spent letting the world believe he was dead, with no name, no address, and a determination not to be found. Somewhere in those years he knew Avery's mother, and the closer Avery gets to that overlap the clearer it becomes that Tobias Hawthorne chose her because of it. Grayson tracks down his own father, a wealthy businessman named Sheffield Grayson with a wife and daughters in Phoenix, and is told to his face that he is not wanted. New threats arrive at Hawthorne House, and it becomes evident that Avery and the brothers are not the only people looking for Toby.

The competing searches collide. Evidence turns up that Toby is not merely hiding but has been taken, and that whoever has him has been watching Hawthorne House closely. Zara's ambitions and Skye's legal trouble complicate the household from the inside while Oren fights a security problem that keeps turning out to have inside help. Avery and Jameson become a couple in fact rather than in theory. Grayson, who will not compete with his brother, puts everything into the search instead. Nash and Libby stop pretending, and Rebecca and Thea work out their own history in the open.

The searches narrow. Working from what Toby left behind and what Tobias Hawthorne's records show, Avery pieces together where he is being held and who stands to gain by taking him, and the answer points away from the Hawthorne family entirely, toward someone with a grievance against them and a reason to want the heiress out of the way. She, the brothers, and Oren decide to move on it themselves, knowing the risk and knowing that going through the proper channels would take longer than Toby has.

Toby is found alive, held by Sheffield Grayson, who has been behind the renewed attempts on Avery's life. The confrontation ends with Sheffield Grayson dead, and the family, with Oren and Alisa handling the aftermath, chooses to bury what happened rather than explain it, a decision that weighs on Grayson most. Toby is freed but will not simply resume being a Hawthorne, and he sets his own terms about how much of the family he takes back. Avery finally has the conversation she has been chasing since the will was read, about how Toby and her mother knew each other and how that governed Tobias Hawthorne's choice of her. The book closes on the arrival at Hawthorne House of a young woman who is the image of the dead Emily Laughlin and who gives her name as Eve.

Toby Hawthorne is found alive, held by Sheffield Grayson, who has been behind the renewed attempts on Avery's life. The confrontation ends with Sheffield Grayson dead, and the Hawthornes, with Oren and Alisa managing the aftermath, decide to bury what happened rather than explain it, a decision Grayson carries hardest. Toby is free, but twenty years of hiding have left him unwilling to simply resume being a Hawthorne, and he sets his own terms about how much of the family he will take back. Avery finally gets the conversation she has been chasing since the will was read, about how Toby and her mother knew each other and how that shaped Tobias Hawthorne's choice of her. Skye's part in the previous year's attacks has cost her her place in the family, Zara is still angling for control, and Nash and Libby, and Rebecca and Thea, have each stopped pretending about their relationships. Avery and Jameson are together, and Grayson has deliberately stepped back. The book's final beat is the arrival at Hawthorne House of a young woman who is the image of the dead Emily Laughlin. She gives her name as Eve, and every one of the brothers reacts.