This was SUCH a fun thriller! I loved the split POVs and the deeper mystery happening with the family. Hoping for a sequel!

Entrance into The Legacy Club can pretty much guarantee you anything you want in life. But when prep school students are nominated alongside a scholarship student, keeping reputations intact becomes everyone’s number one goal.

The Legacies by Jessica Goodman is the book for you if you like:
🔑 multiple POV
🔑 Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars
🔑 teens behaving badly

I do enjoy this author but I didn't love this book as much as I expected. I don't know if it was the content, but for some reason I struggled through it. Some of my students will like this darker story, but it just didn't hit for me right now. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Legacies is sold as a glitzy glamorous thriller set in New York's most elite society. And it wouldn't be a Jessica Goodman novel without a little bit of murder. As a treat. Goodman once again delivers on the secrets, the betrayals, and the jaw dropping plot twists. Her books all need to be adapted into tv shows or movies. If you are looking for a book with similar vibes I absolutely love The Thousandth Floor by Katharine Mcgee.

Thank you to Netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group, Razorbill for providing me with a review copy.

This book starts with a death and then goes back to give us background. The Legacies is an exclusive club that has generations of families and they raise money. Tori is a scholarship girl, nominated to the Legacies by an unknown someone.

Honestly, there were a lot of characters to keep track of and the only ones I did keep straight were Tori (as she's not from a family that has Legacies) and Bernie (as her mom is missing and a big part of the Legacies).

There are, as there always seems to be, tons of secrets, money and other things exchanged for silence and cover ups that come from rich people who think they can do what they want. I did read this in a day though as it's very riveting and a reason I love boarding school type stories!

I really enjoyed the glitz and glamour and the gossip girl vibe. The plot twists were unexpected which was nice. I did have a hard time having the motivation to finish. It was intriguing but nothing original or just was missing something that didn’t keep me fully invested. But it was an overall good read and if you’re a fan of this genre I would recommend it.

Thankyou to NetGalley for the review copy!

Content Warnings
- Death
- Drug Use
- Sexual content

The Legacies is a YA crime novel set in a world of an elite club called the Legacy Club. On the night of the annual legacy ball, someone is found dead and it’s up to the main characters to out why. Is

I was so excited when I received an early copy of this book! I love Jessica Good man’s books and like all others I really loved this one. I love the dual timeline in this book, it help me to solve the case in my own way as well. This book, read like gossip girl, but with a murder aspect, and I was here for it.

This book was a solid look at the world of elite schooling, and what Teens will do for popularity and the idea that wealth can protect you from punishment.
I’m

Thank you so much to Razorbill and Netgalley for letting me read an eARC of The Legacies!
The Legacies 5/5 Stars
Summary from Goodreads: Old money. New secrets. One killer party.

Scoring an invitation for membership to the exclusive Legacy Club in New York City is more than an honor. It gives you a lifetime of access to power and wealth beyond any prep school doors and guaranteed safety and security as Legacy Club members always look out for their own. That is, after you make it through a rigorous week of events and the extravagant gala, the Legacy Ball.

So it’s not surprising when Excelsior Prep seniors Bernie Kaplan, Isobel Rothcroft, and Skyler Hawkins are nominated as Legacies; their family pedigrees have assured their membership since birth—even if they're all keeping secrets that could destroy their reputations. But scholarship kid from Queens Tori Tasso? She’s a surprise nominee, someone no one saw coming. Tori’s never fit in this world of designer bags, penthouse apartments, and million-dollar donations. So what did she do to secure her place?

The night of the Legacy Ball is supposed to be the best night of these seniors’ lives, a night of haute couture, endless champagne, and plenty of hushed gossip.

Everyone expects a night of luxury and excess.
No one expects their secrets to come out.
Or for someone to die trying to keep them hidden.

The Legacies was such a cool book- I really enjoyed it! I liked how it was told in multiple timelines- the past and then the night of the ball, ending the book with post the ball. I also liked the multiple points of view and the fact that I didn’t know who had died until we got the full picture of that night near the end! I love books where the mystery is kept until the real reveal happens. The connections between Bernie, Isobel, and Tori were so surface level at the beginning, but as soon as more and more layers were peeled back, so many more connections came into play and so many intricacies- I never know how authors are able to make things like that happen and lay things out like that! There are so many things I want to talk about in this review, but every one of them is slightly to very spoiler-y, so that just means that y’all need to read The Legacies so I have someone to talk about this amazing book with!

I really liked Jessica Goodman's books so I was excited to give this one a try.

The Legacies is set in New York and follows four senior students from Excelsior Prep. Three are legacy students and the exact people that would expect to be selected to join a super exclusive club, the third is Tori, who is a scholarship student. Everyone is baffled about Tori being one of the chosen.

My favorite book by Jessica Goodman so far. She has really grown as a writer and it shows! I look forward to reading the next book by her. Would recommend for fans of YA Thrillers and for fans of the show Pretty Little Liars.

This was SO good!! My favorite Jessica Goodman yet.

6 students have been nominated to join the Legacy Club, an exclusive elite club made of NYC’s most privileged. The story starts the night of the Legacy Ball, where a someone has fallen from the roof and been killed. It then flashes back to the events leading up to the ball. We get the story from 3 POVs: Bernie, the wealthy privileged daughter of the chair of the Legacy Club, Isobel, the Brooklyn artist with substance abuse problems, and Tori, the scholarship student from Queens, and the only outsider.

There were so many twists and turns in this story, I could not stop reading to figure out who was dead, why, and who killed them. It was a satisfying conclusion, though I feel as though I have some more questions—possibly a sequel in the future?? I loved this world and would love to return to it! 5 ⭐️!

Oh my gosh this book brought me back to days of binging Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl in my teens! It’s a prep school who dunnit and it was a fun read. The writing style was perfect for this type of book and kept me guessing until the end. I truly couldn’t guess who had died the night portrayed in the book and who killed them, and enjoyed the dual timeline. If you’re a fan of multiple POVs, dark academia and an elite who dunnit check this book out. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for providing this book in exchange for my honest review.

It has been a while since I read a good exclusive rich society type of story and I was not disappointed at all. Goodman is an incredible writer who had a killer plot in this book with the Pretty Little Liars meets Gossip Girl vibes. The setting was great and the conflicts kept me entertained in the story. Though I wish the pacing was faster especially with revealing the secrets at a timely manner instead of dumping them towards the end. This book is told from multiple povs which was fun but also too many characters to keep up with. The side characters were great and the romance was a perfect touch for the book. It does lean a bit towards romance than thriller but I it just went with the book. The ending was ok as the secrets were mostly told instead of spread out. This was a great book and I totally recommend checking this book out.

<b>“Looks like a great party,” one cop mumbles to the detective. “Except for the dead body.”</b>

Bernie, Isobel, and Tori. Something is wrong. Really wrong. Readers will be flipping pages like, “what. happened?!” I HAD to know! I had to know the truth. The vibes: gossip girl 🤝🏼 pretty little liars. LOVE Jessica Goodman’s mystery novels! I’ve read them all and loved them! Cozy, cozy murder!

✨ THINGS AND STUFF ✨
-multiple pov (three)
-dual timelines
-the legacy ball
-elite New York society
-exclusive prep school (academia)
-MURDER!!! (murder?)
-pulsing secrets & shocking betrayal
-presentations, donations, nominations
-illicit substances
-blood money
-family dynamics
-rumors & lawsuits
-plot twist!
-“the truth about (redacted) and what we did to her all those years ago.”

Thank you Penguin Teen for the physical copy. #THELEGACIES is available today!
#penguinteenpartner

🎶Song: I Did Something Bad by Taylor Swift

It’s Gossip Girl but with no sense of humor.

I’ve been kind of up and down on Jessica Goodman’s books, and this one is unfortunately closer in quality to They Wish They Were Us than the fun and satisfying The Counselors.

The biggest problem is that it’s just a really shopworn, overused premise, and this book doesn’t bring anything unique to the equation. Put that together with the fact that if you look too closely, there are a lot of holes in the plot, and it makes for a pretty rough reader experience.

I try not to be too demanding in terms of quality on books like this, but the problem is that there are plenty of YA mysteries out there that DO have the originality and quality of plot that we ask for in adult mysteries, and that makes books like this just feel sloppy.

The pacing is good, certainly, but it feels a bit like a lot of Karen McManus books in the sense that the frenetic pacing feels like it’s there to keep you from looking too closely at the details of the plot.

All of the characters are really standard archetypes who don’t deviate at all from type, and that doesn’t make you like any of them very much. The scholarship student—presumably supposed to be the one we root for—is irritating and preachy. Then there’s the golden girl, privileged but with a heart of gold (yawn) and finally the screw up, a well-intentioned party girl. Stop me if you’ve heard all of this before.

I have never read a Jessica Goodman book I didn’t love! The Legacies was no exception. It took me a couple of chapters to get all of the players straight (mostly excuse kids home on summer break make concentrating hard lol). But once, I got into it, I was hooked! We meet the characters as they are becoming nominees for a prestige club. The Legacy Club is a members only club for the most elite of the elite from Excelsior Prep School. Entrance into The Legacies is a guarantee for an easy ride through life with all of the best opportunities at your finger tips. After all, it’s not what you know… it’s WHO you know that matters. The final event of nominations week is private ball. Halfway through the evening someone is dead and someone knows what happened. The story is told through alternating viewpoints of characters, before and after the ball. The identity of the victim is kept a secret until the end and I have to say I wasn’t sad at all when the identity was revealed lol.
Grab this one soon!!

I had such high hopes for this book, but I was so disappointed that I couldn’t finish it. It was just boring and none of the characters were likable. Had there been at least one or two I felt anything towards, I probably would have finished it. Just not for me. I’m a big fan of the cover, though!

I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for a review and opinions are my own.

The Legacies is a YA mystery that is a bit like Gossip Girl set in glitzy New York prep school and an exclusive club. I was into the premise of this book but like other Jessica Goodman books the storytelling fell flat. I find the writing style itself to be fine. But characters are very surface level and are not anything special. I didn’t find myself caring about any of them or what happened to any of them.

The mystery isn’t so much a mystery. I genuinely didn’t care who died and then you find out relatively quickly who it is.

4 stars

I think this was a entertaining thriller. It was slow at times, but other than that this was a good read full of lies and plot twists.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC of this book!

The book opens after a murder, though we aren’t told whose, and what follows is told from 3 different POVs leading up to the actual murder.

I really liked this book! I liked the characters (well most of them, iykyk) & there were some twists I didn’t see coming!

This book is perfect for fans of Gossip Girl and YA Thrillers. If you like those or Jessica Goodman’s other books definitely give this one a chance!

3.5 stars

Getting into the Legacy Club is an honor, it opens doors that can change your life. Most are born into the privilege of this club but this year there is a surprise nomination: the scholarship kid. How did she secure such a coveted nomination? In a world of old money and secrets, what lengths will everyone go to to protect themselves?

This gives all the Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liar vibes so intriguing for fans of dark academia and secret lives of the rich.

I am such a fan of dual timeline, multiple POV, I was very excited to see that format used here. I especially enjoy when stories don’t reveal the victim until later to add another sense of mystery. However although the twists made for an entertaining storyline, they were too easy to guess early on.

Despite getting their POV throughout the story, I found myself unable to connect with any of the characters. Well I didn’t particularly dislike them, I also didn’t like them either. Which in addition to the predictability, made the book feel like it was a bit too long.

This was my first by this author and although it won’t be a top read of 2023 it was still enjoyable. I plan to give her other books a try.

Thank you Razorbill, Netgalley, and BookishFirst for my review copies in exchange for an honest review!