Reviews with content warning for Death - Legendborn

I am in awe of this book. Absolutely adore it and think it will surely become a contemporary classic in the genre. Tracy Deonn weaves together a masterpiece with a killer plot, wonderfully drawn characters, and beautiful, earnest prose. She’s embellished a real campus and based the story in history, lore and legend from multiple perspectives. The way she writes about slavery, violence, generational trauma and contemporary white supremacy is important. As a fellow member of the motherless daughters club, I found her meditations on grief, PTSD, rage and isolation refreshingly realistic and meaningfully expressed. Her depictions of friendship and found family rock. It is a gift to get to know Bree! Her relationships with Alice and her Dad ring acutely true. The pacing is awesome, too. I was sucked in and racing to the next snort-laugh-worthy line of dialogue or gasp-inducing reveal. I can’t wait to read the next book!!!

Content Warnings

nikki_flowers's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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wytherwytch's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book was brilliant. It was slow to get going for me as the fantasy world was set up and explained but once it was going it was utterly brilliant. I really appreciated reading a book with a main character that was a woman of colour by a woman of colour and the raw perspective this book offered. More of this please.

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jimins's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

ahhhh i enjoyed this so much!! like sure some of the characters felt a little flat but bree was great and the worldbuilding was fascinating. in typical me fashion i am a Big Fan of sel. looking forward to reading the next book!

Content Warnings

lmayfieldx's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

“𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞, 𝐬𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭. 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝, 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥. 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠’𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐰”

⭐️: 3

🌶️: 1

tw: mention of parent passing, violence, death, medical content, gore, racism, bigotry

♦️ first person

♦️ chosen one

♦️ king arthur retelling

♦️ magic

♦️ insta love

♦️ love triangle

♦️ ancestral pain

♦️ past trauma

♦️ poc rep

♦️ lgbtqia+ rep

bree is struggling with the loss of her mom. they argued about the school she got accepted into right before her death…the school that bree is starting soon

during bree’s first night on campus, she witnesses a magical fight. a merlin attempts to wipe her memory, but she remembers everything. this leads her to remember the same thing occurring at the hospital the night that her mom died

bree befriends nick, a legendborn that has refused to be in the order. she tells him of her troubles and recruits him to help her find out what really happened to her mom

—

i reeeeally wanted to enjoy this one. but i found myself struggling through this one & even contemplated dnfing, but decided to push through, because it really had potential

i was fairly confused throughout a good portion of the book. i even tried slowing down the audiobook (i usually listen at 2.0+ speed lol) and rewinding several times, but still found myself confused. i thought maybe it was just bc i was listening to the audiobook, but other reviews that i read after finishing also expressed that a lot of other readers were confused too. this was incredibly frustrating, bc how can you really enjoy a book if you’re confused about the stuff happening the majority of the time??

there is a lot of info dumping. sometimes the majority of the chapter would just be explaining the different magical beings or sources of magic - which, yes we need to know all of this information, but it could’ve been incorporated throughout the book better. also, bree seemed to know all of the magic but simultaneously not fully know what was going on. as the reader it was difficult, because we weren’t learning along with bree, since she “knew” these things already

—

😁 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬 😁

~ reflection upon big, real life issues - this is so important & was done so well throughout the book!

~ the way that bree carried herself when dealing with closed minded individuals

~ the magic system, especially the rootcraft & it’s connection to african culture

~ scenes with other rootcrafters - this honestly played a huge role in redemption for the book for me. these scenes were the most interesting to me & the ones i enjoyed most

~~~~

😬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬 😬

~ as i mentioned, there was a lot of info dumping throughout the book - it made parts of the book overwhelming & led to a lot of confusion, honestly

~ no real connection to either mmc - i wasn’t rooting for nick or selwyn. sure, nick was kind and went along with bree’s plan & selwyn did change his demeanor some throughout the book, but i didn’t really care who bree was gonna have/pursue feelings for 😅

~ there were a lot of side characters that we didn’t learn much about & weren’t super important to the story, to the point that it was too many to keep up with

—

i may have let the hype from others influence my preconceived ideas about this book or this book may just not be for me. i’m undecided at this time whether i’ll continue the series or not. i hope that other readers enjoy this book!

Content Warnings

kteliza28's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book has fantastic plot points: A secret magic world hidden in plain sight with historical fiction ties. A POC lead on a mission to solve a great mystery, learning about herself and her ancestors struggles in a racially divided state while also dealing with present day racism as a young black woman.
There’s so much going on in this book that sometimes you can get a bit lost. There’s so much battle that sometimes the descriptions of the action in this ginormous world get a little scattered. Even still, the book was fantastic and I felt it fairly easy to follow the system of the magic world and the hierarchy.
The romance was light- very YA. Which left more focus on the issues at hand in the book, making it way more action packed and story driven than romance. Tons of twists and turns. A little chaotic and hard to follow/overdone at the end but overall a great read.

Content Warnings

halem13's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

farmfreshlisa's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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