- Genre: Young Adult Mystery
- Published by: Feiwel & Friends
- Publish date: June 2, 2026
- Number of pages: pages
- Author’s website: https://www.faridahabikeiyimide.com/
- Support local! Buy the book on BookShop!
Five prodigies, one dead father, a mansion full of suspects…
Octavius the Maestro.
Fola the Brain.
Bilal the Olympian.
Perdita the Artist.
Romeo the Failure.
These are the five heirs of the illustrious billionaire Leontes Button. Adopted and viciously trained with their father’s infamous “Button Method” to prove his hypothesis for creating prodigies—child geniuses—the Button siblings have had no choice but to be brilliant according to their father’s impossibly high standards.
Until he is murdered at his annual Prodigy Ball.
Now, all who attended the ball are required to stay in the Button Manor while the police investigate. But the officers have their work cut out for them—each of the Button siblings has something to hide, but The Heirs aren’t the only ones with secrets. After all, Leontes Button was especially good at making enemies. . .
Rating: 3/5
The setting for this book is intriguing, but something felt missing to make this a great read for me. I love a murder mystery with a full cast; however, I think this cast was too large since the murder takes place at a ball with hundreds of people. I think starting off with this large a pool of suspects was distracting, but also left a gap. We are told that the police are investigating and are dismissing suspects and that the five Button children are basically the remaining suspects, but we get little insight into the investigation other than them getting access to police files. This felt like a miss to me.
It also doesn’t help that the five prodigies aren’t the only prodigies. Button has two other people to whom he applied his methods. One of these ends up being a pretty significant character as well as the butler, Henry. I felt pulled in too many directions for this to be a fun whodunit.
What I did like about the book:
- Leontes Button is a classic narcissistic patriarch and villainous character. A substantial part of this novel is learning about his practices, the horrible way he treated his children, and the enemies he created. It’s fascinating that someone like this was able to conduct this type of experiment.
- I enjoyed the heirs’ personalities and their sibling dynamics. I almost wish the book was longer so that we could have had deeper points of view from each of them. There are some comedic moments that lead to brevity during what is an intense murder mystery.
- In addition to finding out who the murderer is, there are several other mysteries that are solved. I liked that there were multiple things that kept the reader engaged and trying to figure out.
- The ending is similar to the film Clue where there is a “but wait, there’s more” additional chapters that were fun.
Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? I’d love to know!
I received an electronic Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book from Netgalley and Feiwel & Friends. I also received a physical copy as part of Colored Pages Book Tour from Fierce Reads. Thank you to the tour and publishers for the advanced copies. This has not impacted my rating and this review is voluntary.
Musings by Michelle 