Stealing Embers (Fallen Legacy #1) by Julie Hall
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.
Overall, I liked this book. It was your standard, fast paced, young adult, fantasy novel that was fun and I enjoyed reading. Emberly has lived her life with hallucinations of the ‘spectrum world.’ She runs away from her foster home to avoid being sent to a mental ward. Low and behold, she finds out she’s not crazy, there’s an entire other world out there of fallen angels and shadow beasts and she’s a part of it.
I liked Emberly’s character for the most part. She was dealt a really hard hand in life and instead of throwing herself a pity party, she worked hard to survive and when she did join the academy, she embraced her friendships she made. I also liked the diverse personalities of her friends and their quick support and defense of Emberly in her unique situations.
Something that I really disliked was in regard to her relationship with Steel. He did not treat her well and toyed with her feelings, and she still had feelings for him. I am so sick of reading books with this trope and reading situations like this. I hope readers don’t feel that if someone treats you like shit, they deserve your affection. Let’s get past the kindergarten playground stuff where someone pulls your pigtails and it means they like you.
Whew, sorry about my rant, but I really hate that trope lol. Beyond that, I really did like the book! I am excited for the second book. Obviously, this book is based on religion with the concept of fallen angels and such, but there weren’t any overlying or even underlying pushing of religion on the reader, which is important for me. This book is available on Kindle Unlimited.
The Travelling Reader 
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