Carmerella’s Reviews > The Heiress > Status Update

…continues

You had an ancestor who did those things once, and he made so much money that now that money makes money. I suppose this is why some countries eventually round up people like us and cut our heads off.

I’m going to tell you a little secret, darling. One you’ll eventually find out for yourself, but let me go ahead and spill it now: once you’re as rich as we are, you are not really actively doing things that make money. You’re not, say, selling a product or providing a service. - Ruby’s dad to her

Oh, darling, the hopes I had had. My own lovely house in Asheville or maybe Raleigh. New friends, new society, an identity separate from “Baby Ruby,” or Mason McTavish’s odd daughter. Yes, my family was rich, yes, we basically owned Tavistock, but I wanted something bigger for myself, something that felt uniquely my own. - Ruby’s letter to Cam

It’s good to have you back in town, he’d said, his voice low and serious. But if I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open in that goddamn house. - Steve to Cam

Steve owns the hardware store in Tavistock

Okay, this book needs a sequel about Ruby’s life.

I’d been an orphan, in and out of the foster system since birth. A multimillionaire plucking me out of poverty, installing me in her palatial home, making me heir to her fortune? - Camden

And there was this darkness that seemed to cling to me, a past that people only ever spoke about in whispers. A suspicion, even inside my own heart, that I had been placed in the wrong life, living out a role written for someone else. - Ruby McTavish

No one knew what to make of me. I was a rich man’s daughter who hid at parties rather than flirt with available bachelors. I was pretty enough, but there were other more beautiful girls. I did well enough in school, but wasn’t a brain.

“It’s stupid, but it’s like I keep forgetting that I’m going back there with someone,” he says, and then he squeezes my hand. “With you. Whenever I think about being back there, I picture it like it was before. All of them as this … united front. And me. Alone.” He lifts our joined hands, kissing my knuckles. “But now, I’m not alone.” “Never will be again,” I tell him, meaning it. Cam/Jules

My observation: every family have their own deep dark secrets and a murky past. The McTavishes are no different, except they are wealthier than most families.