I could not get into this book. The characters were unlikable with the prince being too whiny and the wizard too arrogant. The king and king consort were so overprotective. The story was really slow to develop with too many coincidences to tie events and characters together. I couldn't get through the whole book.

This was a different kind of book than I’m used to by this author. I must say that having read this I’m certainly looking forward to a next book.


This story contains a lot of different set of characters. Quite enjoyable I might add. I want to see where the author is going to take us. I love the paranormal genre so I’m looking forward to a more developed story line.

A Tangled Legacy is very different from every other Mickie B. Ashling novel I've ever read. It's not just the magical/paranormal/fantasy aspects of the story, the relationship between Alain and Colin isn't her typical passionate connection either.

I'm not surprised that Colin sets his sights on Alain, and their initial hook-up is fun and sexy. I'm not thrilled with the way Alain's character handles their relationship once it's established, and I wish the final scene had been more descriptive. I'm choosing not to say more about that here, I don't want to spoil it for anyone who plans to read it.

The actual story is quite interesting and I wasn't sure which way Ms. Ashling was going to go. Identical twins, look-alike cousins, witches, and necromancers - well this is the first in a series, and there's a cliffhanger, though not a painful one.

Colin is expected to start raising a family, but a breakup with his childhood girlfriend throws everything planned away. One rebellious night leads to him meeting Alain, a grey witch. Didn’t like the grandma and Drake was pretty pathetic. I like how there’s two relationships. Favourite characters were Andrew and Isabelle. Colin has plenty of room for growing up, whilst Alain’s obsession with everything could be his undoing. Pretty fast paced, a little sad but enjoyable.

I was misled by the blurb of this book. It looked like a contemporary romance where a major conflict is the fact that one of the characters is the heir to the throne who falls in love with another man and is now torn between his feelings and his duty to produce an heir. There was a mention of the love interest being a witch, but I did get the impression that it would be more contemporary than fantasy.

So, I was really taken aback when I encountered mpreg on page one. Colin’s father the king is gay, he got his husband pregnant who then gave birth to Colin. A little later it gets explained by the husband being intersex. So, in this world intersex apparently means that you look like a cis-man, but you can pregnant…but also impregnate someone else since we later learn that Colin is also intersex, but he had hoped to marry a woman and produce an heir with her. And the way the book talks about male pregnancies makes it sound like it is quite common. Which requires lots of people with that special ‘type’ of intersexuality. Sorry, but for me, that still reads like the old-fashioned fanfic ‘I don’t want a woman near my precious characters’ mpreg to me. The explanation is just a flimsy excuse to make it sound like something different.

Added to all this is a writing style that is just…bad. There’s a lot of telling and very little showing, and the story has three 1st person POV narrators: Colin (the 20-year-old crown prince), Alain (over 30, Nobel prize winner – yes really, powerful witch) and Colin’s biological father (consort in his 50s) and they all sound the same. Without the name of the narrator at the beginning of the chapter, I wouldn’t have been able to tell whose POV it was.

3 stars
This one grew on me a bit. The first three chapters in I had a small worry that this one might be a DNF for me. The connection between the two main characters happened so very quickly that I was genuinely worried there would be nothing interesting enough to hold my interest for the rest of the length. Additionally the story is told in a jumping first person POV that at first made everything feel rather flat to me.

I wasn't sure I liked Colin very much at first. He was spoiled and ungrateful, and it took me a bit to understand and warm up to him. Alain too, on first impression was arrogant and a bit insufferable, but as I continued reading several things happened. I got further insight into both the main characters and grew to like them more as I understood them. Their romance proved to move both more quickly and more slowly than I'd expected and I began to find it believable.

There was a bit more plot than I had expected and though there were a couple of steamy scenes the narrative did not get bogged down into nothing but a succession of sex scenes as I worried at first. (Don't get me wrong, I love a good sex scene, but if there's nothing else to the story it palls after a while). I cared about the plot, and I looked forward to seeing how it was resolved.

If I have some remaining negatives about this book that is one of them. A lot of things were not resolved. Now it's entirely possible that this is part of a series, in which case that makes perfect sense, but read as a standalone there are some minor exasperations. Still overall, even though there were a few things (like a first person narrative) that aren't particularly my thing, I did enjoy it. I read through it and I don't resent in the least doing so.

So overall I can give this one a solid three stars, for some interesting world building, an actual plot and a couple of characters who do manage to grow both individually and together throughout the story.

This book had a good premise and sounded really promising but it didn’t really pay off for me. The romance felt so rushed and had no time to develop. There was no character development and the plot felt super rushed and not well planned out. I also didn’t like the random POV that were added, like the main characters father and cousin, it felt super unnecessary. Overall this was a promising book but it didn’t deliver, it felt very underdeveloped.

This was a book right up my alley. Every plot point listed in the description was interesting, and relevant to my interests. The story itself was pretty good, with a few exceptions.
The male pregnancy found in the book isn't like what I was expecting, like as the result of a spell, or science experiment. Instead it's more complicated and something that can only be done on intersex individuals, not every willing male. Also, the rate of and depiction of intersex was confusing. This book treats it like basically a typical man with a womb. That's not really what I've come to understand intersex as, or that it is common enough that a father and son would both have the same condition in the same way. A better way of having male pregnancy would be to have the scientist character win his Nobel for male pregnancy, instead of dementia. Maybe magic will play into this aspect later on?
The magic was pretty ok, but the revelation that the main character also had magic was somewhat underwhelming. It seemed to be added much too late and almost as a side note. Why would you know that magic was real but forbid your family to practice it, especially considering the perillious situations royalty can get into? You let magic choose your spouse then forget it can be useful because Dad's not fond of it?
Overall, it was a fun read, despite some of the questions I had about it. It is pure fantasy, and moves the plot quickly. I definately would read the rest of the series, even if I do roll my eyes at the internal logic sometimes.