Summary: What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic's wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic's highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.
From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June's brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.
Thoughts: I think I've mentioned before that I don't really read dystopian. I'm more of a fairytale, happily-ever-after, kinda gal. And dystopian's all...
*Gravity Falls. Neither the gif nor the show belong to me.
And yet, Legend has been sitting on my to-read shelf for awhile because I read it had something to do with siblings. I never could find it easily though and my book-money tended to go toward more hopeful possibilities. Until the day I found it on the for-sale table at our library and got it for three bucks; it was a happy day for this book addict!
And it was great! A crime/drama/dystopian that never left anything to chance.
First off, just to get this out of the way, I loved the plot being something of a murder/framing case yet set in this future-esque world. On the downside, it's a pretty common plot still and the general direction of the story was easy to predict.
Even so, it was really well written. Authors have a tendency to add meaningless little things in their books to drag a scene out or add quirks to their characters. Mary Lu uses this technique to carefully bring in clues and plot points and reveals them flawlessly. It was really fun to see where each little thing would lead!
The characters though, blew me away. From the first page they are bursting with life and secrets and stories to tell. But it doesn't all spill out at once, to the very end the past is still being slowly unfolded to show who these people are and where they come from. Even the side characters seemed so real! Day was spectacular and June was amazing! And I loved the heavy emphasis on family in here! The only complaint here was that SPOILER it was another case of teen-love-at-first-sight. He thinks "She has beautiful eyes" she thinks "He's the most beautiful boy I've ever seen" and two days later they're kissing in an alley END SPOILER. Even with that though, I enjoyed their interactions (when not kissing) and the characters themselves were great.
Content: FULL OF SPOILERS because their are too many to keep mark so read at you're own risk. Kissing, they get pretty close but nothing else happens. Day bandages June around the waist at one point but nothing happens. Lots of violence. A tiny bit of language...it's hardly there to the point where I can't really even remember the words used.
All in all, a pretty clean read but maybe not for the kids. I recommend it for the characters if nothing else and I will definitely be reading the next in the series as soon as I can!
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