The Legacy of Gods series is a series of interconnected college romance standalones featuring a different couple in the same friend group for each book. These books showed up on BookTok so much that I had to read them, even though I was super late to this party. As much as I’ve seen the covers everywhere, I knew exactly nothing about these books going in. Within the first few pages, I could see why everyone was talking about these books.
I love a series of interconnected standalones, and this series is no exception. Unlike other standalone series, however, these should definitely be read in order or you will be confused. There are lots of different characters, relationships, and plotlines that will make significantly more sense if you start from the beginning.
All of the books in this series have some form of an enemies-to-lovers trope, with most of the plot centering around the relationships themselves. There is some mafia stuff going on, but unlike a lot of dark romance, there’s not a lot of actual mafia war and violence happening here. It’s more college stuff with wild kinks and a light mafia overlay which I actually like.
Legacy of Gods starts off by letting you know exactly what to expect from the series. The first book, God of Malice, is immediately so dark and edgy. The final book that’s out so far, God of Fury, is an MM romance and the most emotionally powerful of all the books. While the others were wild rides and fun reads, this one hit me in the heart. It’s also the most triggering. And potentially also the sexiest.
Each of the six books features an excessively dangerous hero who you would never want around in real life. I am convinced no humans actually behave like the characters in these books (not as it pertains to the kink but the emotional behavior) but I am also convinced that’s what makes them fun.
All of these characters are either dark, broody, dysfunctional, or twisted in some way. There are enough demons and damage in these books to keep every therapist alive busy and I freaking love it. All manner of mental illnesses, traumas, and disabilities are represented in the pages.
Legacy of Gods doesn’t shy away from even the most taboo of kinks. Most of the books involve some level of consensual non-consent (aka rape fantasies) and other similarly intense moments like primal scenes and BDSM with very few limits. God of Wrath also features the hero using a gun on the heroine as a sex toy, which occurs in so many dark romance novels and is among my least favorite tropes, but oh well.
It requires a slight suspension of disbelief to accept the fact that this entire friend group all has very niche kinks in the same vein. There’s also the issue that every single female character in this series is a virgin at the beginning of their respective books. The men are all promiscuous before they meet their girls, and the girls are all inexperienced virgins. By the fifth book, it gets a little old. They’re all in college, and in the year of our lord 2024 maybe half of them being virgins I would buy but all of them? Hm.
The mistake I made with this series was binge reading them all at once. I should have broken them up, and read them in between something very different like a romantasy or a mystery. When read straight through, by the third book it all started to seem like a lot of the same. That mild complaint aside, these books are fun, over-the-top, page-turners that are worth reading if you are a fan of dark romance. If dark romance isn’t your thing, exit stage left immediately because this is not the place to start.
This series is not yet complete. The final installment is set for release on August 29, 2024
Spice: 5
Writing: 3
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