Reviews

Are you someone who enjoyed a Picture of Dorian Grey?

If you are, this is exactly the book for you! An Unexpected Inheritance takes a scenic deep dive into how bad humans can be. Pride, ego, greed, and self preservation is all on the table. Even the ‘morally upstanding’ characters operate with their own self interests in mind. Buckle up because you’re in for one wild ride.

There are quite a lot of characters and seeing as I read this book almost 12 whole months ago, I can’t remember anyones names. In the notes I left myself, I referred to everyone as the names below, and that’s what we’ll refer to them as throughout this review.

The eldest son and his wife. (Passive Brother & Controlling Wife)
The middle sister and husband (Sister & Scumbag Husband)
The youngest son (Gambling Addict)

The eldest son and his wife are the most ‘etheical’ of the three siblings. However, the wife only acts moral not because she believes it’s the right thing to do, but because she wants to maintain that self image of herself and is afraid of others pointing fingers at her. She judges the other siblings for wanting the money and being ‘shady’ because she has the luxury of not being in a bad financial situation. If she and her husband were in a worse condition, they may have acted very differently.
(That being said, it seems they have managed their finances better than the middle sister and her scumbag husband. So I guess they’re entitled to look down at others from their high ass horse.)

The sister and her scumbag husband on the other hand, is very well off, spend lavishly and have two spoilt brats for children. They have marriage problems (so, so many) and instead of trying to get to the root of the problem, the sister copes with her sadness by spending insane amounts of money. At least she didn’t resort to alcoholism I suppose.

The youngest son is a gambling addict. That’s it. I don’t know what else to tell you.

Throughout the entire book, I was waiting for some big drama to ensue. It never did, but nonetheless here’s a list of things that would’ve been fun :

- As the executor of the will, I was waiting for the eldest brother to enter the money into his fathers ‘assets’ so he could unilaterally do whatever he wanted with the dosh despite being out voted by his siblings.
- I was waiting with baited breath for the sister to have a massive fight and split up with her scumbag husband who was just using her as a trophy wife. Extra points if it was Astrid Leong style.
In all seriousness, there is no trust in that relationship, but the sister doesn’t want to face the cold hard truth and deal with it. She smooths over problem with money in this story, but how about later on when the husband goes behind her back to do something without her consent happens again?
- I wanted to see the younger brother being chased so badly by debt collectors. It very sadly never happens, but that guy deserves it.

And now for some feelings:
- Honestly really satisfying when the eldest brothers wife is suddenly made aware that she can’t keep controlling her husband, and can’t keep expecting him to follow her way and always side with her.
- Honestly really infuriating how the eldest brother has no backbone until the last moment and also doesn’t look out for his wife.
- Honestly really infuriating how the sister’s husband is just scum.
- Honestly really infuriating how the youngest brother isn’t interested in anything except for money and doesn’t want anything to do with his siblings otherwise.
- Honestly, they are just all really unsavoury people and so once again, if you liked a Picture of Dorian Grey, you’re going to love this!!

Everything was spiralling downhill in fiery chaos until the final 2 chapters. Those last two chapters made this book drop so badly in my eyes. It turns out the money was not dodgy at all and they could all split it without feeling guilty. But no. That’s not good enough imo .

Even if this specific pot of money is not dodgy, that doesn’t erase what kind of character the father turned out to be, and what other types of corruption/bribery he was involved in. It doesn’t erase the realisations of what the other family members are like when their backs are against the walls. This wasn’t touched on at all which was a horrible shame, because it could have turned out to be the kind of book that has no happy ending, but a lot of lessons learnt. Instead we get the kind of book that tries to wrap itself up neatly, but makes no sense.

Tldc: This is a modern day Picture of Dorian Grey. The magical element comes in the form of several characters being surprised that corruption exists.

---
If you enjoyed [b:The Picture of Dorian Grey|12346651|The Picture of Dorian Grey|Oscar Wilde|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328399788l/12346651._SY75_.jpg|1858012], this'll be right up your street.

Review to come.