Five Heirs, One Murder, and Not Enough Pages for All of Them: A Review of The Heirs by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
- Jun 16
- 5 min read
Author: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group
Rating: 3.5★
Content Warnings: murder, suicide, depression, burnout, drug use, alcohol use
For every burnt out gifted kid who never quite lived up to the version of themselves everyone else imagined.
Book Review at a Glance
Rating: 3.5★
What it’s about: Five adopted prodigy heirs living under the crushing expectations of their father find themselves at the center of a murder mystery when that same father turns up dead.
Why I liked it: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé built five genuinely distinct characters with their own histories, personalities, and arcs despite sharing the same household. The mystery layers kept me reading even when I wanted to put the book down.
What held it back: The POV balance was uneven, a few of the siblings felt underdeveloped compared to others, and the pacing dragged at times, especially in Octavius’ chapters.
Good for readers who enjoy: Multi-POV mysteries, stories about extreme expectations and inherited pressure, and ensemble casts with diverse representation.
The Premise
When I first picked up The Heirs, I was genuinely intrigued and a little nervous. Five POVs, a murder at the center of it all, and a cast of adopted prodigy children who each excelled in something completely different? That is a lot of moving pieces. It is the kind of book that could either click together beautifully or fall apart under its own weight.
The story follows Bilal, the eldest child and a fencer; Octavius, a musician; Fola, a mathematician and chess prodigy; Perdita, an artist; and Romeo, the one who never quite lived up to the Button family standard. When their adoptive father is murdered, each of them becomes both suspect and investigator, and the secrets that rise to the surface go deeper than any of them expected.
What Faridah Did Right
Let me start here, because there is a lot to be excited about.
The characterization in this book genuinely impressed me. Five siblings, all growing up under the same roof with the same father and the same impossible expectations, and yet every single one of them felt like a distinct person. Their voices, their histories, the way they moved through the world, none of it overlapped in a way that felt lazy or repetitive. That is not easy to pull off, and Faridah does it well.
The diverse representation across the cast was also wonderful to see. Each of the Button children brought something different not just in terms of their talents, but in who they were as people. I loved that even sharing a household and a story, they had all clearly lived different lives and carried different weight.
And the mystery itself? It pulled me forward. One of the things Faridah does best here is stacking secrets. Just when I thought I understood what was happening, another layer would appear beneath it. The central murder mystery kept expanding outward in ways I did not always see coming, and that kept me turning pages even during the slower stretches.
Where It Fell Short
Here is where I have to be honest.
The idea for this book is better on paper than it ended up being in practice, and most of that comes down to balance.
With five main POVs (plus a few side character chapters sprinkled in), some siblings inevitably got more attention than others. Octavius, in particular, takes up a significant portion of the book, and I found myself frustrated by it. His chapters started to feel repetitive after a while, like the same beats were cycling through without the plot moving forward. I kept waiting for something to shift and it took longer than it should have.
Fola, on the other hand, barely appears despite being one of the most compelling figures in the premise. She is described as the perfect daughter, the one who met every expectation without visible cracks. I desperately wanted to see what was going on beneath that surface. How did it feel to be the one who got it right? What did the pressure of their father’s expectations actually do to her? We do not really get to find out, because her POV chapters are limited and her arc felt thinner than her siblings’.
Perdita might be the one I am most frustrated about. Her history is genuinely fascinating, and when her secret is finally revealed, it lands with real weight. But we only get maybe two chapters with her. Two. By the time that reveal hits, I realized I barely knew who Perdita was as a person, which undercut what should have been one of the book’s most impactful moments. The material was there. The page time was not.
Romeo was another missed opportunity. He is the so-called failure of the family, which on its own is a fascinating position to write from. But his chapters ended up being largely about his relationship with Evie, the cook’s daughter, rather than digging into what it meant for him to carry the label of the one who did not measure up. I wanted more of his history, more of his interiority, and instead he felt like he was just sort of present while the story happened around him.
The pacing also worked against the book in places. There were stretches, especially in the middle, where I genuinely thought about setting it down. When a mystery novel loses its momentum that noticeably, it is hard to recover.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I would give The Heirs 3.5 stars. There is a genuinely great book inside this one, and I think Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé has the skill to write it. The characters she built are specific and memorable, and the concept of exploring how extreme expectations can fracture a family is one I find endlessly fascinating.
The execution just needed more balance. More Fola. More Perdita. More Romeo. Less cycling through the same emotional territory with Octavius. The bones are all here. The layers of mystery kept me invested even when the pacing lost me, and the diverse, distinct cast is something I will think about long after the plot details fade.
If you love ensemble mysteries and are curious about a story that asks what happens to the children who carry their parents’ impossible dreams, this one is worth picking up. Just go in knowing that not every sibling gets equal time on the page.
Thank you to Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Continue Reading:
Looking for more book recommendations? You might also enjoy:
Comments