CHARACTER
The Grandest Gameby Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Avery Grambs

Avery Grambs

Quick Facts

  • Role: Heiress to the Hawthorne fortune; architect and game master of the Grandest Game
  • Presence: Not a point-of-view character, but the competition’s designer and moral center whose choices shape every turn
  • First appearance: Publicly presiding over the masquerade launch of her competition
  • Key relationships: Partnered with Jameson Hawthorne; collaborates with the Hawthorne brothers; takes a watchful interest in Lyra Catalina Kane; becomes the target of Savannah Grayson’s accusation
  • Public image vs. rumor: Philanthropic benefactor creating opportunity—challenged by the claim that she’s hiding a deadly secret

Who They Are

Avery Kylie Grambs is the benevolent face of power: a former player who became the puzzle maker. She inherits Tobias Hawthorne’s legacy but refuses to inherit his cruelty. Instead, she designs a game that promises transformation—less a gauntlet to break people than a crucible to reveal them. Yet her polished generosity is tested by an accusation that reframes her as a possible antagonist, reminding us that in Avery’s world, benevolence and secrecy can coexist.

Presence and Appearance

Avery is defined more by aura than by detail. At the masquerade, she arrives like a myth made flesh: a gown of deep midnight purple, the skirt stitched in silver “like moonlight on water” (Chapter 18). Her mask gleams like black gold, edged with black and purple gemstones. More telling than fabric is the way others see her: Jameson looks at her “like she was the sun and the moon and the stars and eternity, all rolled into one” (Chapter 20). The effect is deliberate—Avery curates an image of wonder and command, turning presence itself into part of the game.

Personality & Traits

Avery’s personality blends strategist and steward. She wields wealth and spectacle not to dominate but to create a stage where others can discover themselves. Yet she controls that stage with precision, guarding her own motives as carefully as any puzzle box.

  • Strategic and brilliant: The very architecture of the Grandest Game showcases her mastery of puzzles and long-range design, a skill honed by surviving Tobias Hawthorne’s inheritance game.
  • Generous with intent: She funds a twenty-six-million-dollar prize and equips players with priceless masks and commemorative pins, signaling that her game is an investment in people—not just a power play.
  • Commanding poise: When she addresses the competitors, she exudes easy authority, choreographing attention and setting an unmistakable tone for the contest.
  • Empathetic mentor: In the library, she recognizes Lyra’s distrust and offers candid advice about risk, vulnerability, and living—wisdom earned from her own uneasy entry into Hawthorne life.
  • Guarded and mysterious: She keeps her knowledge compartmentalized and her endgame private; Savannah’s later accusation hints at a hidden history beneath the polished surface.

Character Journey

Avery’s arc moves from player to designer—from solving mazes to building them. She takes the ethos of Games, Puzzles, and Strategy and reframes it: a game can empower as well as test. Her mentorship of Lyra shows emotional growth; she is no longer the wary outsider but the steward who remembers what it feels like to be one. The spectacle, the resources, the careful rules—all of it suggests a responsible exercise of power. Then comes the fracture: Savannah’s claim that Avery killed her father. With a single sentence, Avery’s curated benevolence becomes a question, pushing her into a new phase where protecting her legacy may require revealing the very secrets she’s kept offstage.

Key Relationships

  • Jameson Hawthorne: Avery and Jameson Hawthorne operate like co-conspirators in elegance. Their partnership anchors the competition’s presentation and gives personal stakes to its outcome, embodying the book’s Romance and Complicated Relationships. His unwavering adoration shores up Avery’s authority, while her confidence gives their duo a magnetic center of gravity.

  • The Hawthorne Brothers: Working in concert with Nash, Xander, and Jameson, Avery projects unity and control—a public front that rebrands the Hawthorne dynasty for a new era of Family and Legacy. Strategically keeping Grayson Hawthorne uninformed about key mechanics underscores both Avery’s tactical caution and the fault lines that still run through this family.

  • Lyra Catalina Kane: Avery seeks out Lyra Catalina Kane privately, offering guidance that blends empathy with challenge. She recognizes in Lyra the same blend of caution and potential she once carried, positioning herself as a mentor who knows the cost—and the payoff—of stepping fully into a game.

  • Savannah Grayson: With Savannah Grayson, Avery becomes a contested figure. Savannah’s declaration—an allegation of murder—ties Avery to the book’s central Secrets and Hidden Truths and detonates in the narrative like a delayed charge (Chapter 81). It reframes Avery from benefactor to possible villain, ensuring that every generous gesture can also be read as cover.

Defining Moments

Avery’s impact lands in a few crystalline scenes where her intentions, power, and mystique converge.

  • The library conversation with Lyra: Masked and alone, Avery offers counsel that reframes risk as necessary living. Why it matters: It reveals her core philosophy—games are not escapes from life but routes into it—and positions her as a mentor rather than a puppeteer.
  • The commencement of the Grandest Game: Avery declares the competition a chance to experience what once transformed her life. Why it matters: She recasts wealth and puzzles into a social experiment about identity, capability, and courage, asserting a kinder vision of power while still controlling the board.
  • Savannah’s accusation: Offstage from Avery, Savannah announces her plan to expose Avery as a killer. Why it matters: It punctures Avery’s carefully maintained image and sets up a new game Avery may not control—one where truth, not theater, becomes the winning move.

Essential Quotes

I was you once. Trusting people wasn’t exactly my forte, either. But if I could give you a little advice, going into this game? ... Sometimes, in the games that matter most, the only way to really play is to live.
— Avery Grambs to Lyra Kane, Chapter 18

This is Avery’s thesis: vulnerability is not a liability but a strategy. It turns “play” into a form of courage and frames the Grandest Game as a pathway to identity rather than just a contest for money.

I was given the chance of a lifetime. And now, I’m giving it to you. Not the fortune—not all of it anyway. But the experience? The ultimate puzzle, the most incredible game, the kind of challenge that will show you who you are and what you’re capable of, all with life-changing riches in the balance? That, I can give you.
— Avery Grambs, Chapter 20

Avery recasts inheritance as experience. She is not merely distributing wealth; she is curating a trial designed to reveal character, suggesting that power wielded with intention can be transformative.

Win or lose, you’re all a part of something now. You are not alone.
— Avery Grambs, Chapter 20

This line broadens the prize beyond money to community. It underscores her role as a unifier—someone using spectacle to create belonging—while quietly asserting control over the narrative of what the game means.

When I win, I’m going to use the moment I claim the prize to let the world know exactly who Avery Grambs is... Avery Grambs killed my father.
— Savannah Grayson, Chapter 81

Savannah weaponizes victory to redefine Avery. The threat reframes every previous act of generosity as potential misdirection, shifting Avery’s arc from beneficent architect to contested figure whose past may be the ultimate riddle.