Book Review: Dark Legacy By Anna DeStefano

Book Review: Dark Legacy
By: Anna DeStefano
Dorchester Publishing
2 Heart Review as Romance
Disclosure: Book Provided by Dorchester Publishing

“Die!”scream her nightmares. The voice is her sister's, the compulsion stronger than any ordinary dream.

Maddie Temple can't go through this again. Her twin has been in a coma for the last ten years. Their psychic link was severed. At least, that's what she thought.

But there's a lot Maddie doesn't know – about the 200-year-old curse on her family, about the shadowy group that wants to exploit the Temple twins' powers for themselves, about the sexy psychiatrist offering to help her. The only way to find the answers and avoid being pulled into the abyss of madness is to trust her heart and confront her dark legacy.

As many who've read this book have mentioned, this book defies being placed into one genre or another. There is suspense, romance, sci-fi and paranormal elements to this complex story. It's not a traditional romance. If you are looking for something different that is very light on the romance then you might want to check this out.

Although the story takes off right from the start, it was hard for me to get pulled into this book because I just couldn't buy that there was ever anything between Maddie and Jarred before Sarah started influencing Maddie. This makes the risks that Jarred takes throughout the book to be very hard to believe. In my opinion, if you can't see the relationship between Maddie and Jarred, then the rest of the book falls flat.

In fact, I never came to feel deeply for any of the characters and I thought the slight love story that was included didn't have any sparks. Again, I question whether Maddie and Jarred had any real feelings for each other. The relationship seems too forced, probably because of the intensely fast pacing of the story, but it still needed something more for me to buy into the story.

Dark Legacy works much better as a suspense story and I would have enjoyed it more if it had left out the slight try for romance. I really felt the forced romantic elements took away from what was a very well written paranormal suspense. As I mentioned, the pacing is furious as the story unfolds and Anna fills every second with intense scenes and emotions. She keeps the suspense at the highest level throughout the entire book and you race through the story.

But, it left me wanting more. I wanted a more believable romance tied into the story and I hope that the next book provides that. I was also left feeling like I didn't really like any of the characters except Jarred – and even he got on my nerves because I couldn't figure out why he would risk his life for Maddie. The rest of the characters all leave you wondering if they are pure evil, or what they are looking to get out of each other.

This book got a huge amount of hype online and I was so looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, because the romance didn't work for me at all, it clouded how I felt about the book as a whole. Add to that not having any likable characters and this just wasn't a book for me.

If you go into it just for the paranormal suspense and don't always need to relate/connect with characters, then you might be able to enjoy it since the language and pacing are very good.