comparing this to succession and saltburn is wiiiiiild. while there are a FEW aspects in this book that touch upon themes in both those, it's not nearly enough to be blurbed as such. here you have the typical story of an outsider, maya, marrying into an upper echelon family, the sterlings, and mysteriously being named the heir to inherit the entire family fortune after the previous heiress dies.

the writing was super clunky. there was a lot of telling and not showing which, in a mystery/thriller, basically negates those aspects of the book. the first few chapters were filled with nothing but paragraphs of info dumping (and before any of you say a single thing, YES I READ PARAGRAPHS). i understand that was necessary to set up the world/characters, but it made it hard for me to get into the story. the pacing was very slow - we hardly got anything worthy of note to do with the actual plot until about 30-40% in. the middle was filled with repetitive scenes of the wealthy family making the new wife feel like the gum on the bottom of their shoes. like we GET IT. she's "never be a sterling". ugh.

the last third of the story was when things finally started to pick up. right as i was finally getting into it, the plot twists that were revealed felt...boring? lackluster? it wasn't anything i didn't kind of guess was going to happen. i wasn't truly shocked by it. and then immediately after the big reveal, we cut straight to the epilogue. now that actually was a surprise because i didn't expect such an abrupt ending. it also felt a bit unsatisfying. i wanted more closure with the endings of certain characters because the set up was there for a bigger conclusion and we got none of it.

this story takes place in 2004 and i do have to hand it to the author - she did capture what the world and culture was like during that time perfectly.

overall, there wasn't anything about this book that really stood out. nothing that i haven't already read before.