Book 23 Review: Legend of Me

Once again I am going straight into a review instead of giving you guys a summary first because this is a book I received from the publisher in exchange for a review. So because of that I am trying to get the review out faster to fulfill my part of the deal. This book does not actually come out until September 2018 and this is not the actual cover art. They are going to release it July 24, 2018. I believe

my ARC shows the actual cover and it is beautiful. Because of the nature of this book I need to be extremely careful not to give away spoilers because, well….the book isn’t eve out yet. So here goes 🙂

Author: Rebekah Purdy    Page #: 298 Genre:  YA Fantasy

Star Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The only reason that this book did not get a solid 4 stars is because the first half of the book took a little long to really get going. Honestly, it almost seemed like the first half and the second half could have had been two different books. The book revolves around a 16 year old girl by the name of Brielle who lives in a town where a beast is killing people.

A knight by the name of Kendrik comes in to town and everything begins to change. Brielle meets the knight and starts having visions of the two of them together and in love, which confuses her because the visions are so realistic and yet she knows that she has never met him before. To make situations even more confusing for her, she is in love with Raul a gypsy, and yet she cannot stop the way she feels whenever she is near Kendrik. She tries helping the knight find information on this beast so that he could slay it and protect the town, and during this time he began to have strong feelings for her. At the same time Raul is also finally revealing to her that he is in love with her as well, but her grandmother of course does not approve.

As this portion of the story plays out you also find that there is more going on than you thought at first. It turns out that Brielle is not just a love sick girl, she is actually having visions of each of the victims being murdered by the beast. She decides that she has to do something in order to help stop this beast. Unfortunately, the truth about this beast and Kendrik is far more than she could have ever imagined. That is the part of the story that really grabbed my attention, it was seriously the turning point for me. The story suddenly starts moving at a much quicker pace and you are left there in awe after every revelation. Brielle seems to go from a love sick girl to a strong woman who is trying to figure out a major secret in order to save the lives of future victims. You are then brought into a world where magic, curses, and evil is real. It really just became a much better book.

Pros: 

• Once you learn more about this beast the story really picks up. It moves the focus away from a girl and her two crushes and moves to a story with a bit more substance.
• I loved the way the characters were written. I loved the grandmother, Rhyne, and Raul. They were written in such a way that I would really like to hang out with them. They added a nice element to the story that help balance out Brielle.
• The actual lore of the beast was done very well! I loved that portion of the story, it really explained why the first portion of the book was the way it was.

Cons:

• The romance portion was a bit over the top. Every time either Raul or Kendrik would make contact with her you were given a description of how their touch would pretty much set her body on fire and made her knees buckle. I understand why the relationship were extremely important but holy cow. I felt like it was a bit much.
• The beginning seemed a little slow moving. The ending was fantastic but I feel like if they would have taken a little less time talking about Brielle’s knees buckling with every touch we could have delved more into the lore behind the beast.

Overall: 

While the beginning of the book was slow I still really enjoyed it and would definitely read other books by this author. As a YA I think it does hit the mark, but I would not recommend it for younger tween/teens. After all the A in YA does mean adult. There are some situations in the book that might not be appropriate for a younger audience.

The book itself is slow paced in the beginning. It seemed like it was just going to be a romance novel with a beast in the background, but thankfully it was not. It showed Brielle become a stronger young woman. It showed her becoming her own person and not caring what anyone had to say, I found that wonderful. But to be honest, if it weren’t for the second half of the book I would not have rated it so high. The second half of this book really makes it worth reading. While there was a small continuity error (Brielle asking a character how he was alive…..and then a couple of pages later the same thing happening but with more information this time) it really was a good book. I would read this book any time over the book Beautiful Creatures. And if you did enjoy Beautiful Creatures, I think you would enjoy this for sure.