85 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer Lynn BarnesThe Hawthorne Legacy
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 41-50Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary
Jameson and Grayson arrive at True North. Jameson tells Avery what they learned: “Sheffield Grayson believes that Toby set the fire on Hawthorne Island” (161). Jameson also tells Avery that Sheffield made it clear he wants nothing to do with Grayson.
Chapter 42 Summary
Avery goes skiing with Grayson. Grayson tells Avery: “[Skye] sought Sheffield Grayson out, Avery. The man blamed our family for his nephew’s death. He slept with her out of spite. God knows why Skye did it, but I was the result” (165). Grayson also tells Avery about a game his grandfather used to organize for him and his brothers: “To win the game, we had to shatter the ballerina. […] My grandfather told us that as you amass the kind of power and money he had—things get broken. People. I used to think that he was talking about his children” (166). Avery reassures him, “I’m not the glass ballerina” (167). Grayson tells Avery they can work together going forward, as friends. She notices how he emphasizes the word friend: “The word had edges” (167). Their conversation is interrupted by the paparazzi.
Chapter 43 Summary
Avery returns to True North, where she finds Jameson holding a picture frame that shows the three Hawthorne children, Toby, Skye, and Zara. On the back of the frame, there’s an engraving—the face of a compass. Avery, Max, Xander, Thea, and Rebecca open the picture frame together. Inside, they find another picture—of Skye, Zara, and a strange man. Inside the frame is also a blank piece of paper. The group realizes that the paper probably has some kind of hidden ink and that the other half of the clue is with Zara: Tobias left Skye the compass and Zara his wedding ring. They need the ring to finish the clue. In this chapter, Avery also comes across Thea and Rebecca kissing in a stairwell, reigniting their former flame.
Chapter 44 Summary
Max, Thea, and Rebecca find out who the strange man in the hidden photo with Skye and Xara is. They learn it’s Jack Nash, Nash’s father.
Chapter 45 Summary
Grayson, Xander, and Jameson tell Nash his father’s identity. Avery pulls Libby aside to tell her all the things she’s been keeping from her: “I told her everything. About Harry and who he really was. About what we’d found in Toby’s wing. About my birth certificate and the charities in the will and why I’d wanted to come to True North” (177). Like Avery, Libby now believes that Toby/Harry is Avery’s biological father: “That’s why he left you the money” (178). Libby is momentarily shaken by the news, which would mean that Libby and Avery aren’t half-sisters biologically after all; Avery tells her, “If you say we aren’t sisters, I will flying-tackle you right here” (178). Libby and Nash assure Avery that they will go to Connecticut to look for Toby/Harry themselves. Avery will return to Hawthorne House.
Chapter 46 Summary
Avery is sleeping when Max nudges her awake, telling her, “Jameson Hawthorne is in the hot tub” (180). Max encourages Avery to pursue Jameson.
Chapter 47 Summary
Avery joins Jameson in the hot tub. They end up kissing: “I moved again through the water. The rest of the space between us vanished. I brought my lips to Jameson’s, and he kissed me, hard. My body remembered this. I kissed him back” (184). Their kiss is interrupted by someone taking a photo. Oren fishes Avery out of the tub and sends Eli running after the photographer. Eli doesn’t catch the man. When Eli returns, Oren asks if it was a paparazzi. Eli replies, “It was a professional” (186). When Avery asks, “A professional what?” Oren and Eli ignore her (186).
Chapter 48 Summary
On the flight back to Hawthorne House, Avery worries about the man from the night before. Max jokes that it could be an assassin, but Avery wonders if Max could be right: “Who would want me dead? wasn’t a dismissive question anymore” (187).
Chapter 49 Summary
Back at Hawthorne House, Avery asks Oren to show her the Hawthorne vault. She’s hoping to find Tobias Hawthorne’s wedding ring. However, it’s not there. Oren suggests Tobias placed it in the envelope given to Zara at the reading of the will. Avery realizes, “I was surrounded by a fortune in jewels, but the one thing I needed wasn’t here” (192).
Chapter 50 Summary
Jameson, Grayson, Xander, Max, and Avery go to Zara’s wing of Hawthorne House to search for Tobias’s wedding ring. However, Zara discovers them mid-search. Jameson tells Zara they want the ring, and Zara agrees to hand over Tobias’s wedding ring for $5 million.
Chapters 41-50 Analysis
Although the coming-of-age theme in The Hawthorne Legacy is epitomized by the book’s protagonist, Avery, other characters also have their own coming-of-age subplots, which these chapters elucidate more clearly.
First, there is Grayson, dealing with the aftermath of his biological father, Sheffield, pushing him away. Grayson also faces the fact that his biological father is an unkind—or even downright immoral—man. He tells Avery that Skye reached out to Sheffield, who slept with her out of spite, which resulted in Grayson’s conception. Acknowledging that a parent is a bad person can be difficult. Avery also grapples with this, as she believes that Toby/Harry is her father and suspects he’s responsible for the deadly fire on Hawthorne Island.
Nash faces a similar moment of reckoning as Grayson in these chapters, when the identity of his biological father is revealed: Jack Nash, a ski instructor with whom Zara had a romantic fling and whom Skye later slept with (resulting in Nash). With this revelation, it’s clear that Jack Nash caused the rift between Zara and Skye—and Nash was the physical embodiment of that poison fruit that came between the two sisters. Nash must also come to terms with this fact, which could theoretically incite feelings of (unwarranted) guilt.
Guilt is a common thread seen in many of the character’s storylines. Nash may feel guilty for his birth driving Skye and Zara apart. Avery seems to feel guilty when she realizes that her presumed father, Toby/Harry, may be responsible for the deaths of three people. Jameson and Grayson both have guilt surrounding Emily’s death. And Rebecca is struggling to reconcile her past as she moves toward adulthood. Specifically, she is still dealing with unresolved guilt around the death of her sister, Emily, when she tells Thea: “If, for once in my life, I’d been enough for anyone—for the girl I loved—my sister might still be alive” (189).
Coming-of-age stories are often intertwined with romantic subplots. From movies like Titanic and Dirty Dancing to literary works like Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, these narratives often show young people “growing up” while also finding love. This narrative trope is also evident in The Hawthorne Games. The romance between Avery and Jameson becomes physically tangible thanks to the kiss in the hot tub. The relationship between Thea and Rebecca is physically rekindled when Avery sees them kissing at True North.
These chapters also reintroduce a motif previously seen in The Inheritance Games: the ballerina. The ballerina figurine was a clue used in Tobias’s puzzles for the Hawthorne boys when they were younger. In The Inheritance Games, Avery was repeatedly warned that she was just the glass ballerina, a passive piece of the puzzle—a clue in the mystery—not an active player. This identity has always bothered Avery, and she rebels against it now when she tells Grayson that she is not the glass ballerina (167). Grayson acknowledges that this is true. The glass ballerina represents Avery’s coming-of-age as she transitions from being viewed as a passive object to being respected as an active agent in the current puzzle.
Even though Avery seems to be gaining personal agency and empowerment, she remains in danger. A reminder of this threat occurs when someone takes a photo of Avery and Jameson in the hot tub. Eli says the mysterious photographer was a professional, but when Avery asks, “A professional what?” Oren and Eli ignore her (186). Later, Max jokes that it could be an assassin, but Avery wonders if Max could be right: “Who would want me dead? wasn’t a dismissive question anymore” (187). This foreshadows a future attempt on Avery’s life.
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