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Moderate: Cursing, Death, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Stalking, Car accident, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death
Spice: 🌶🌶🌶.75
This is the first book in the Legacy of God's series, and I can honestly say that I am hooked! I've heard a lot of people talk about this series, but I never really paid it that much attention. I came across this book on Audible for sale and thought I'd give it a try. It did not disappoint, and I've already bought the test of this series.
Talk about crazy psychopaths in mask doing spicy things to the girl or guy their obsessed with, all while trying to solve major problems in their lives. This book kept me interested from chapter 1. All out takes is the wrong run-in from these guys to have that fine line between love and hate. They will exploit their obsessions weaknesses to gain what they truly want. To bad it throws them for a loop to by the end. This book is Killian and Glyndon's.
Tropes:
🖤 Psychopath x Good Girl
🎨 Dark College
🖤 Enemies to Lovers
🎨 Rival Colleges
🖤 Secret Society
🎨 Mental Health
🖤 Obsessed/Possessive MMC
🎨 Touch Her & Die
🖤 Dub Con/Non Con
🎨 Breeding Kink
🖤 Hates the World but Her
🎨 Somnophilia
🖤 Mentally Black
🎨 Vrgn FMC
🖤 Unhinged
🎨 Thoughts of Suicide
Killian suffers from antisocial tendencies, which makes him a true psychopath. This series has quite a few of them, which brought on a different kind of dark romance that I enjoyed. Some books may throw it out there that a character is like this, but this series actually talks about this mental health issue. You deal with it from their minds and their parents' minds.
Yes, this book, like every book in this series, has a few chapters told in the main characters' parents' POV. Side note, all these characters' parents have books as well. The last chapter will make their parents' books if you want to go back and read them. Which I definitely am.
Killian is part of The Heathens. Which is a club ran by Killian, his brother Gareth, cousin Nikolai, and best friend Jeremy. They all have ties to the Russian mafia. Killian and his brother are more along the lines related to Niko, who will be second in charge to the mafia one day.
These 4 go to College on Brighton Island, which is south of London. There are 2 Colleges on this islands. Kings U, which the Americans and these 4 attend, and Royal Elite U, which the British people attend. They don't usually cross paths unless they have to.
Which Killian crosses Glyndon's path one night in a very dark way. Glyn often thinks about suicide. She is depressed and thinks she is often not good enough. She comes from a family where pressure lies on her shoulders. Even though they really don't, she thinks they do. Glyndon loses her best friend to suicide and is visiting the cliff where he died. This is where she meets Killian, and her life is put in his hands.
The kinks in this series are amazing, really spicy, and kind of out there. Glyndon gets off on force and pain. Yes, she is a vrgn and doesn't really know the depth of her kink, but Killian recognizes it, and it's something he enjoys doing. He kind of takes the force part literal in his crazy mind but ultimately finds Glyndon fascinating and pursues her whether she wants him to or not.
Glyndon can recognize the psychopath in Killiam because her oldest twin brother, Landon, is just like him. I didn't like how Glyndon fears her brother, yet she had compassion towards his mental health issues and tried to say he was different than Killian because she thought Landon loved his family and Killian didn't love anything. Yet she knows love is an emotion they don't have or show. It's a learned behavior. She kept comparing Killian to Landon and saying they were different. They weren't.
Glyndon learns some things about her friends death that she didn't know about him. Things that didn't add up in her head. She quickly decides that she wants to use Killian and get info from his brother. By the time she thinks she has it all figured out, Killian is head over heels for her. What Glyndon thinks she knows and tries to use against Killian to push him away ends up being a mistake in her part. Things are not what they seem.
This whole series takes place at the same time or very close to around this time as Killian and Glyndon's do, expect book 6. Every couple has their own set of issues going on, and that's why they don't notice their friends getting involved with other members or other friends. This book can be read as a standalone, but it is book 1 in the series.
🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧
Audiobook
The audiobook version was amazing. Sebastian York narrated Killian's part, and Josie Minor did Glyndon's. This wasn't a duet, but they both did well narrating the other persons voice and accent when it came that time.
Glyndon's voice is British, so Josie has a British accent. When she read a line as Killian, she did very well doing an American accent. Visa Versa with Sebastian. He dive an amazing job when it came time doing a British accent as Glyndon's voice.
This was my first book by Josie, but I think she is in more of this series, and I can't wait to hear what else she can bring. I've listened to Sebastian York's work before in quite a few books, and he always does an amazing job.
Graphic: Bullying, Cursing, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Gaslighting, Alcohol
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Medical content, Suicide attempt, Sexual harassment
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cursing, Drug use, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Car accident, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
Graphic: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Eating disorder, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Alcohol
Minor: Addiction, Bullying, Drug abuse, Drug use, Self harm, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting
Graphic: Death, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Stalking, Car accident, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Mental illness, Physical abuse, Suicide, Murder, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
Graphic: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Stalking, Car accident
Moderate: Suicide, Blood
Minor: Toxic friendship
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Stalking, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
This is a dark romance, and the author has a trigger warning at the beginning, and for good reason. Side note: I do notice the Kindle version (with the male cover model) didn't show a trigger warning in it. However, I read a paperback deluxe edition that did include a trigger warning for the following: non-con, dub-con, and suicidal thoughts.
This book is dark and starts that way from the beginning. There's no letting the story warm up; we jump into the scalding heat immediately. The reader is immediately pulled into the sorrow that Glyndon feels over her friend, Devlin, who's taken his life recently. She goes back to the cliff where he passed and there she first encounters Killian. Which is likely the craziest, and dirtiest, encounter she's ever had.
This story is told from both Glyndon's and Killian's perspectives. As we get to know them, and their friends and family, we learn that they attend competing universities, one American and one English. There is some mention of families not getting along, and elite clubs that are at odds with each other too. The conflict is there but doesn't seem fully developed, since these two groups of friends keep intermingling and not completely killing each other.
I think the reason that isn't more of an issue is that the real discourse for Killian and Glyndon is both of them fighting their own nature within the relationship. Killian is dealing with some more complex desires and Glyndon is walking the line between her desires and her own mind telling her to stay away.
There is a big twist at the end of this story that I did not expect or even remotely see coming. I think I had to do an actual slow blink because...what?!? It made total sense, but the author does a nice job of keeping the reader engaged with other aspects of the story.
If you like dark romance, dark academia mixed with the mafia, and an intense story, then you'll likely enjoy this.
Moderate: Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts