BOOK REVIEW: LEGEND by Marie Lu

“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time. You try to walk in the light.” – Day
There is only one word to describe this book: unputdownable. I’m sorry, is that even a word? We can pretend, m’kay?

Y’all, I haven’t read a dystopian in a few years now; but I used to devour them like Doritos. The Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched, The Selection…you name it, I read it. Then there was my dystopian dry spell; and then…there was LEGEND.

I. absolutely. love. this. book. As Marie Lu’s debut, LEGEND is in a class of its own, telling the story of a world set 100 years in the future, where the United States is now divided into two separate peoples: the Colonies and the Republic. As you may have guessed, the Republic (armed with biological warfare, arrogance, and corruption) calls the shots; and the Colonies are riddled with various strains of a plague resulting in a rapidly diminishing population, and an angrier-than-thou lower-class fighting for survival.

Within the pages of LEGEND we meet two characters: Day (aka Daniel Altan Wing), and June Iparis, who share their POV in alternate chapters. The former, a criminal on the run with a home-base in the Colonies; the latter, a recent graduate from the Republic academy with a mission to capture the elusive Day, and a desire to prove herself to her heartless Commander.

Aside from Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed two different POV’s as much as I adored Day and June’s. These are two characters whom. you. love. And they’re surrounded by other characters whom you kinda can’t get enough of. Tess {btw... if anything happens to Tess, I will never forgive Lu}, John…heck, even Kaede. While I never felt connected to characters such as Tris in Divergent or Peeta of The Hunger Games, Lu’s characters are people whom I was emotionally vested in, and that makes this debut all the more amazing.

Book 2 is in my shopping cart as. we. speak.


Star Rating: *****


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