About the Book:

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. . .

Find on Goodreads. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).

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About the Author:

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé is the instant New York Times, International bestselling, & Award-winning author of ACE OF SPADES, WHERE SLEEPING GIRLS LIE, FOUR EIDS AND A FUNERAL and THE HEIRS. She has also written stories for Marvel’s Spider-Verse and BBC’s Doctor Who. In 2026 she was selected for the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 list. In 2024 she was a world book day author with her title THE DOOMSDAY DATE. Faridah is an avid tea drinker, a collector of strange mugs, and a graduate from a university in Scotland where she received a BA in English Literature. She also has an MA in Shakespeare Studies from Kings College London. When she isn’t spinning dark tales, Faridah can be found playing the cello, competing in netball matches or examining the deeper meanings in Disney channel original movies.

Website | Instagram

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Interview:

What inspired the “Button Method” and the Prodigy Ball? 

A prominent theme touched on within the novel is the commodification of youth and so the ideas for the Button Method and the Prodigy Ball come from showing the tangible ways these brilliant young characters have been dehumanised and have had their lives reduced to a science experiment gone right (or wrong in the case of Romeo).

How did you decide which specialisms to give each of the heirs?

In the opening prologue scene of the book we see the heirs as children, and I loved the idea of an object representing each of them and so their specialisms were decided based on which objects would have a strong visual identity. In the end I went with a chess piece, a violinist’s bow, a gold medal, a paintbrush and a pencil.

The five siblings narrate, along with a few chapters from those around them. How did you decide who would tell each chapter? Were there any chapters that you were unsure who was best to narrate?

The narration of the chapter was decided by who would be the most interesting lens to view the scene from. It took a lot of rewrites before I felt that the story was in a place whereby, despite the POV, each of the main characters had been given an adequate amount of space in the story.

There are a few flashback chapters in the book. Did the placement or subject of these change over the course of the book?

The placement of the flashbacks has pretty much always been the same across all iterations of the story. This is because I am quite a meticulous planner and so I always have a decent idea of the structure before I write. 

If you were made to pick a specialism to devote all your time to, with the expectation that you’d become an expert at it (or be deemed a failure), what would it be?

Languages! I’d love to be a polyglot. I think it would be so cool to be able to travel anywhere and know how to speak to people. Sadly, I only know English and a bit of Chinese, Mandarin and Yoruba.

Who was the most surprising character as you were developing the story, the one who you didn’t expect to love or invaded the story?

Definitely Evie Gray. She actually didn’t even exist in some of the earlier iterations of the story — there was another character that had her role that I had to completely reshape and rewrite.

Please recommend a UKYA book

THE BIG ASK* by Simon James Green

Thank you!

*Affiliate link