Friday, September 25, 2020

#Review - Stealing Embers by Julie Hall #YALIT #Fantasy

Series: Fallen Legacies # 1
Format: Kindle, 393 pages
Release Date: September 22, 2020
Publisher: Julie Hall
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy




A realm of monsters. A world of lies. She belongs to both. 

My name is Emberly, and everything I’ve ever been told is a lie.

Monsters don’t exist. Wrong.
 
The nightmarish spectrum world is just my imagination. Wrong.

 
In a few months, I’ll finally be free. Wrong.


It takes being dragged to a secret training academy in the mountains to unravel the truth. My captors--an elite race of angel-born warriors called Nephilim.

The deadliest of them all is an arrogant shape shifter, Steel. He’s gorgeous, lethal, hot-headed . . . and convinced I’ll be the death of them all.

Maybe he’s right. As soon as I show up, the monsters that have haunted me my entire life breach the academy walls. My only hope of saving my new friends is learning how to control my powers, but when a stunning betrayal hurts someone I care about, I have an impossible choice.

Stay and fight for a place to belong . . . or decide once and for all that I’m better off alone.

Enter the spectrum world, a realm in-between worlds where shadow beasts draw blood, reality is a maze of twisted lights and sounds, and life goals are whittled down to just one: survive.


Stealing Embers is the first installment in author Julie Hall's Fallen Legacies series. This story focuses mainly on a girl named Emberly. Emberly is a runaway who saved herself from being locked away in a psych hospital after nobody could understand why she has so many scars on her body and was always getting injured. She has always thought there was something wrong with her since she is the only one to see the shadow monsters. Emberly is 6 months short of turning 18 and aging out of the system and thus gaining her freedom from the foster system.

But, after stopping for food which she hasn't had for days, she is cornered by a woman she thought she could trust and is taken to a place called Seraph Academy. Seraph Academy is one of nine secret academies around the world dedicated to the education and training of Nephilim, or people with blood of Angels. This Academy is located in the Colorado Mountains near Glenwood Springs. Nephilim attend the Academy from age 8 until age 20 when they become fully trained and ready to do battle with the Fallen and their Forsaken allies who have been trying to eliminate the Nephilim who are descended from human women and Fallen Angels. 

Emberly really sticks out due to her hair color, blonde with red highlights. Plus, she has no clue who her parents were since she was dropped off at a fire station when she was a baby with a note about her birth date and her name. Emberly comes to know Sable, the headmistress of the school; Steel, the boy who can shape shift into (3) different forms: lion, eagle, and bull as well as driving her hormones crazy; Ash who becomes her best friend and roommate; twins Greyson and Sterling who are the first to open their arms of friendship to Emberly and are quick with sarcasm and jokes to smooth her transition into the school.

Emberly soon realizes that the monsters she thought she was running for, are real, and they are out to capture her by any means necessary. Except for the fact that she's more than meets the eyes. Except for the large wings that she has no clue how they metamorphize, or the strange battle gear that comes along with the wings whenever she is confronted by the Forsaken and Fallen who want to harm her or Steel, or Steel's youngest brother and sister. Emberly's connection to Steel both drives the story and slows it down. It's like watching Bella and Edward all over again with the angst and over-protectiveness. 

The final chapters of this book were by far the most entertaining and enlightening as well as introducing a character named Tinkle. No, I am not kidding! Readers need to focus on the ending so that you don't miss the revelations as to why the Fallen and Forsaken are so keyed up about Emberly. There is also a part in this story where Steel should have had a narrative attached. He knows things about Emberly. He has seen a possible future that isn’t all that glorious. He goes out on a solo mission to retrieve someone he left behind. Hopefully, Forsaking Darkness will reveal more. 


 


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54477007-stealing-embers



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