Review: Legacy of Shadows (Supernaturals of Castle Academy #1) by Tessa Hale

                                                          

Print Length: 290 pages

Publisher: Tessa Hale (March 15, 2023)

From Goodreads.com: All I wanted was to keep my head above water. To survive long enough to hit my eighteenth birthday so I could escape the nightmare that my homelife had become. But all of that was turned upside down the moment they showed up.

The best friend from my past. The surly brooder. The kind-hearted nerd. The king of campus. The dark one.

They say they’re here to give me a fresh start in a place where I’m safe, warm, and cared for. And I can’t deny the pull I feel to all five of them. The buzz that lights beneath my skin when they touch me. And for the first time, I feel like I might belong.

But not everything is as it seems. These guys have secrets. Ones that will rip my world wide open. But when a dark evil begins stalking us, we’re all in for the fight of our lives…

  

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

After reading her Royals of Kingswood Academy books  in June of last year, I decided to give this author another shot (even though that series was a bit hit and miss for me). Right off the bat, this book felt very similar to that one. Here we have a girl who knows nothing about the supernatural realm being whisked off to a new school that is dedicated solely to those who are part of that world. We have a mean girl who thinks the men belong to her and goes out of her way to antagonize the main character, and we have another wanna be alpha male type who you just know is going to cause problems sooner or later. Even her soulmates seemed similar, although they had different names and looks (especially Trace with his whole shtick of its for your own good if I stay away from you).

I also had the same issues with this book that I had with the prior ones, mainly the way that Leighton is always passing out when it seemed like the author wanted to move from one scene to the next, but couldn't figure out a way to do it. For someone who had been abused all of her life, I get that she had issues, but I desperately wanted to see her stand up for herself more both against the guys when she knew they were purposefully not telling her something, but especially against Chloe and the other mean girls.

Now here, is where this book takes a major turn from the Royals series, Leighton knows NOTHING about the supernatural world until nearly the end of the book. She doesn't know what she is supposed to be, she doesn't know what her soulmates really are, and she certainly doesn't really understand the danger that she is in. And this is all because these men who she is supposedly mate to refuse to tell her anything. Yeah, they claim its for her own good, and they don't want to scare her, but I would have thought a little fear would have been good for keeping her, oh I don't know. In the dang house? A little more willing to put up with their overprotective ways? 

Although, in the grand scheme of things, I guess it doesn't really matter considering after she KNEW the extent of which her life was in danger and that she should have one of the others with her at all times, she still makes some really dumb choices instead of just standing up to the others. Everything that happened in the last couple of chapters could have been avoided had she not just run away again (something she was very good at doing, and did in fact do throughout the book), but instead demanded answers and then had been willing to listen to their explanations for why certain choices were made. In fact, numerous times throughout this book, I just wanted to shake her at times and ask where her common sense was.

Warning, this book does end on a cliff-hanger (something else that annoys me, but given I was already familiar with the way this author writes I expected). I do have the whole series on my kindle as I type this, and will be reading the rest just to see if it continues to closely compare to her other series.