This book kicks off with a bang; you know someone is dead, you know it happens at the Legacy Ball so you spend the rest of the book trying to decipher clues as to who it was. I'll tell you right now, I don't think you're going to figure out the who, why, or how. It was a shock and I truly didn't see it coming.

"The Legacies" is the perfect combination of Pretty Little Liars, Euphoria and Gossip Girl. I love the New York City setting, the idea of there being a secret club amongst the high schoolers that is invite only, that goes on for generations... it's prime real estate for a story like this one.

There are multiple mysteries that are happening within the book aside from who was killed and who did the killing. You spend the whole book trying to unweave the webs that were created by our characters off page; who nominated Tori Tasso, the Dan Humphrey of the group, where is Bernie's mom, and what is the secret that Isobel and Skyler are keeping?

I will say, I did not expect any of the answers to those questions and you cannot predict them so don't even waste your time. It was so thrilling to put the pieces together at the same time that our characters were and I enjoyed every minute.

You are constantly flip flopping back and forth from the week leading up to the Legacy Ball and the aftermath of the murder, so you do have a general idea of who was not killed, which was a little calming because I was on edge the whole time trying to figure out who was the victim.

The inner workings of the Legacy Club were very intricate and detailed; Goodman put a lot of thought into the story and the history of the characters, their parents, and the other members of the club.

The writing was perfection, you really got inside Bernie, Tori and Isobel's heads and got to know them. There was great character development from everyone, though I was not really a fan of Tori and Isobel. Something about them rubbed me the wrong way, and I really did not like Tori's girlfriend - I felt like she was very rude and dismissive of everything Tori was going through.

Bernie was my favorite character; she's Blair Waldorf with a soul and I was proud of her for sticking up for herself throughout the book. She was fun, relatable and interesting; by far my favorite character of the book.

As I said, I was very surprised at who was killed, how it happened and what the reasoning was; everything that happened at the Legacy Ball (and in the hours leading up to it) were high intensity and it added a quicker pace to the book which I appreciated; nothing is worse than a reveal that is held too close to the chest and takes forever to reveal.

The story surrounding our main characters was wrapped up nicely and things didn't end with the killer/killed reveal, but there was so much left on the last page that I would be very surprised if we didn't get a sequel.

The Legacies was an excellent book that I loved so much; it was well written, had good pace, an interesting story and flawed but developed characters. I cannot wait to read Jessica Goodman's other novels!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4/5 STARS

This is a YA contemporary drama/mystery.

Similar Books:
Gossip Girl
They Wish They Were Us

Synopsis:
Set in a NYC private high school, wealthy teens vie to be part of The Legacy Club, an exclusive society for the elite. But when someone is murdered in the club, secrets and lies are uncovered.

This is pitched as a YA thriller, but it is more a drama with a little mystery. It is written from three different POVs. You do not know who was killed or what happened until the very end, so it keeps you guessing. It reminded me a lot of Gossip Girl with a murder twist at the end. It was fast paced and kept you reading. If you have read any other of Jessica’s books this has a similar vibe. I enjoyed it!

Thank you to Penguin Teen for the gifted copy! 💵

"The Legacies" is a YA thriller/mystery full of drama and rich kids. The story follows kids from New York, who get nominated for an exclusive club that could get them connections for the rest of their lives. All of the nominees are rich, except one, and they have a lot of secrets. One of them ends up dead.

I really liked this book. It had multiple POVs throughout and different timelines. One leads up to the ball and the other after the ball (when the murder happened). The story unfolds nicely and I like how we didn't know who died until the end and the hints were sprinkled around. The drama kept things interesting and fast-paced.

My only complaints are that most of the characters are pretty unlikeable. They were all spoiled rich kids and annoying. The story also seemed a bit too unrealistic like everything resolved too nicely.

If you like Gossip Girl and drama-filled YA, I recommend this book! Thanks so much to netgalley, Penguin, and Jessica Goodman for the arc!

Thank you so much to Penguin Teen for the advance copy!

This is not my first Jessica Goodman book and every time there's a new release I always find myself being drawn her books solely for the covers. Plus growing up in the days of Gossip Girl, messy, rich, high school kids are always a fun ride.

I am conflicting on how I feel about this because I was drawn to the premise and wanted to know who died & who the killer was. I had previously done audio only for Goodman's prior work and I got about 40% in before I received access to the audio and until then it was a struggle for me to read. Once I got the audio and did them in tandem, it was just a better experience for me (also the narrators were great). I will say this was probably my favorite out of the ones I read.

I love the way Goodman was able to put us in the space of an elite high school and how status and who you know is everything. I like the way she broke the story up between the present (at the crime scene) and leading up to the Ball. We could speculate who was the victim and who caused the death and naturally I was wrong as always. These high schoolers in this book felt so much more wiser beyond their years. I know I definitely wasn't has poised and smart as these kids are.

It is hard to say the things I want to say without giving away spoilers but there was a certain character whose actions really bothered me. And those who read may feel the same way??

I will probably continue to check out Goodman's future work because I do get invested into the storylines and I need to see how it ends.

I recommend this if you love multi POVs, unreliable narrators, messy, rich, high school students with messy parents.

As someone that rarely read YA mystery or any kind of YA, this book is surprisingly doesn't bored me and pretty interesting.

The legacies give me gossip girl X magnolia parks vibes, and I'm here for it. I love how complex each character is, and depending on which POV you're reading, you can hate and love a character only in a matter of different POVs. I also love the additional "After the Ball" chapter which gives me a glimpse of what mystery lies ahead and gives me some clues on what's going to happen and what to believe.

Each character has its flaw and that is understandable, but in this book, I truly can't sympathize or even root for Isobel. I found her quite unlikeable and I don't fond of her POV but I do like Bernie's POV and like a little bit more of Tori's POV.

The Legacies is a YA Thriller mystery with a splash of drama, rich people's antic, gossip girl vibes, and the toxic and confusing dynamic of the friend group. Thank you Razorbill, Author, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! Just…wow. This book was absolutely and completely addictive! I definitely did not want to put it down!

This story is a young adult thriller set on the scene of NYC’s Upper East Side old money aristocracy. Wealth and power may seemingly solidify friendships and alliances however, behind the scenes, secrets are really the glue that binds.

The story unfolds from three point of views from Excelsior Prep seniors. Bernie Kaplan: reigning school queen, epitome of old money elite, and yet she has a predilection for making damaged friends. Isobel Rothcroft: the quintessential self-destructing golden girl with a self-loathing artistic talent and a penchant for abusing opioids. And finally, Tori Tasso: the misnomer that no one looked twice at and now wondered how she ended up with a nomination to the Legacy Club without the pedigree to get her there.

I genuinely liked the viewpoints of Bernie and Tori and the revelations that unfolded; however, Isobel was another matter. She’s an absolute mess in need of serious intervention and her viewpoint reads like a sloppy drunk. Unfortunately, that didn’t make me empathize with her character, instead I sped through large chunks of her “woe is me” monologues.

The suspense and thrill were also missing until about page 200. From this point the story explodes until it burns all the way through the end. If you find yourself debating a DNF, I definitely did, hold on it gets much better.

I enjoyed this. I have to say, though, that I didn't necessarily find a lot of the characters to be very compelling. Could it be that I am just too old to relate to our characters? Potentially. I do tend to really enjoy this type of YA thriller/mystery though, so I'm not sure. I liked that we were sort of questioning who the victim was throughout the story--that was a cool mechanic and added another layer of mystery to an already twisty story. I also like how this was sort of Gossip Girl-y--those book series (like Gossip Girl, or the Clique series sort of) where teenage drinking and drugs and opulence is really heightened are so fun. Overall, a twisty and fun story, but I do wish I had been able to get on with the characters even more to make this an even better read.

Thank you Penguin Young Readers and Netgalley for a copy of this digital ARC.

The Legacies follows a group of teens who attend a private high school, and their ambition to gain access to the Legacy Club – which promises wealth and exclusive opportunities for its members. Told in multiple POVs with a now/then timeline, one of the key differentiating factors in this book is that we don’t know who the victim is.

Unfortunately, I did not find the story that intriguing, and didn’t find myself wanting to pick it up and find out what happened. This was just not a super memorable read for me.

Many thanks to Penguin Teen and Razorbill for the ARC via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
Old money.
New secrets.
The Legacy Club is the highly selective group for the top NYC private school students, six per school per year. We are talking about the uber-wealthy - rich people behaving badly. There is a dead body at the exclusive club during the final event, the Legacy Ball, launching the murder mystery. Timing-wise, the book alternates between the days leading up to the ball and the police questioning immediately after the ball, building the anticipation of the murder as well as many potential motives for murder. The victim remains a mystery until pretty close to the end of the book, too. I liked that there was room to suspect almost any of the main characters - either as the killer OR the victim! This seemed to me like a deadlier version of Gossip Girl but (gasp) I’ve never actually seen GG so that might not be an accurate representation!!
While this is a YA novel, the amount of normalized drinking and drug-use make it seem more mature than what I’d usually recommend to my students. If you read this AND you’ve watched Gossip Girl, please let me know if I’m right in my comparison of the two!

It's no secret around here that I love a "rich people behaving badly book" - there's something about it that appeals to my Gossip Girl-loving heart. I KNOW they're bad people and I'm okay with reading about them. I don't have to like or root for the characters in every book I read. I know it's a personal preference thing and I'm okay with that. Just be warned, if you aren't a rich kid drama girlie, you probably won't find much to like in this one.

This book feels simultaneously similar and different than Goodman's other books. I've rated her other books 3, 3.5, and 4 stars, respectively, so she's always been a good-but-not-a-favorite author of mine. I still find myself so drawn to her synopses and eagerly await each new release! The whole vibe of this one (like her other three books) is more of a contemporary fiction book with some death and suspense as the backbone. Her books aren't thrillers, they're sort of mysteries, but they're more like... mysterious contemporary fiction? This book is the first that features unlikeable rich kids at a prep school in NYC - the others are set in normal high schools or at summer camp.

The story alternates between Bernie (a rich kid living in her mom's shadow), Isobel (another rich kid and Bernie's best friend with a substance abuse issue), and Tori (the scholarship kid whose mom died the year before). I enjoyed reading from each of their POVs for the most part but I didn't love any of the characters. Isobel was pretty insufferable throughout. I found myself rooting for Bernie a little bit and obviously Tori is the most likeable of them all. She's trying to better her life by making it into ~the Club~ and getting the cash prize to help her father out. The book also alternates in chapters "After the Ball," where we find out that someone fell off the roof and died during the event, so the reader tries to figure out who it was, what happened, and why.

There were a handful of intertwined mysteries that I found pretty unique and interesting! I figured out one small piece of the puzzle but wasn't able to put the whole thing together. I enjoyed the journey and pretty much read the final 3/4 of the book in one sitting, which is always a good sign!

I enjoyed this read from Jessica Goodman. I love a good dark academia book with mystery and all. Some characters were stronger than others. I was surprised at who the body turned out to be and felt like that was not who it should’ve been.

Thank you publishers and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I always love a good “rich people being rich people” satire, and while The Legacies doesn’t reinvent the wheel, Goodman weaves a fun thriller that had me rapidly turning the pages. The characters are wonderfully messy, and there’s a refreshing multigenerational arc that I rarely see as elaborated as it is in this book. Beyond just rich people being bad, Goodman deftly handles how the upper class elite continuously exploits the working class, as well as how that entitlement is passed on to their heirs.

The Legacies begins the moment the police arrive at the secretive Legacy Club, where a body has been found and Bernie Kaplan, the daughter of a New York socialite and big-shot lawyer, is the one with blood on her hands. This cold open works great by building suspense, and I really liked how the victim’s identity is kept a secret as well. This adds an additional mystery element; whereas most thrillers spend time exploring the potential murders and their motives, Goodman asks if, maybe, the victim deserved their tragic end. While I was able to guess the murderer’s identity early on, I think the true twist/revelation (or at least the one that had me clapping a hand over my mouth in shock) was revealing the victim and really elevates the book’s interrogation of social class and privilege. I loved that Goodman was able to tackle some more difficult topics without losing the clear satirical edge.

Though the writing wasn’t particularly notable and some of the tropes were familiar to me as a casual YA thriller reader, the three POV characters were all fun to follow. Working-class scholarship student Tori Tasso was my favorite, especially because I related to her the most. Refreshingly, although her backstory does somewhat play into the “dead mother” trope, Goodman takes time to explore the effects of her mother’s death on Tori’s widowed father and avoids stereotyping him as a workaholic-turned-abuser, unlike most adult thrillers. Her arc also includes a fascinating commentary on how the legal system enables the elites. Tori’s world is effortlessly diverse: she’s a queer Greek-American with a Japanese girlfriend, Joss. I really liked Joss’s character—she’s supportive but blunt and not afraid to be honest with her girlfriend, though Goodman’s use of the word “cute” to describe her felt like it was feeding into a stereotype about Japanese girls and made me wince.

Bernie is the magnetic Queen B-type stock character, but I really enjoyed her character arc as she realizes her special relationship with her (now-missing) mother may have been more codependent and exploitative than she initially thought. She’s a more straightforward character that lacks the nuances I found in Tori, but her introspective growth felt authentic, especially when she begins to go outside her privileged bubble to befriend Tori. Her disillusionment with her wealthy childhood was a bit too instantaneous for my liking, but I liked the emotional aspect.

The last POV character, Isobel Rothcraft, is the stereotypical unhinged teen in the vein of HBO’s Euphoria. She’s an unstable artistic genius whose wealth has enabled her addictions to alcohol and opioids as people turn a blind eye to her. I felt that Isobel could have been a good vehicle to explore these issues, but she was too one-sided for my liking as she just got drunk or high throughout the entire book. I did like that she eventually realized her problems and sought help, but like the rest of the book, felt a tad rushed to be believable.

Despite my reservations about the characters, The Legacies was still wildly entertaining and kept me engaged throughout. The ending is nice and tidy (perhaps too easily resolved), but a nice open-ending grants the characters closure while leaving the door open for a prequel or spin-off.

Stuffed with plenty of backstabbing, drama, and, of course, rich kid antics, The Legacies is a YA thriller worthy of any genre fan’s collection.

3.75/5 stars

3.5 rounded up. Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book. I really enjoyed the way this story was told through the eyes of several girls with flashes forward to the future from the scene of the crime. I liked seeing how these different girls navigated their lives through the Legacy ball and the drama that ensued. There were lots of interweaving story lines and it was interesting to see how they came together. The pacing was a little slow for me in the middle but picked up nicely at the end. I wasn't super thrilled with the ending and I'm assuming there is going to be a sequel maybe to tie up some of the loose ends. Defiantly a good read if you are into books centering around girl drama and secrets. I would definitely read more from this author in the future.

Jessica Goodman is a summer staple for me. Her books never disappoint and I really enjoyed her new book! This book definitely had "Big Little Lies" callbacks with the flash forward of a murder scene and then backtracking to find out who died and how/why. A group of teens are part of an exclusive club called the Legacies. Each member is connected in unexpected ways and are hiding juicy secrets. I love stories about rich people behaving badly, fascinating secrets, and a hunt for clues to a mystery. This plot is fast, well-written and fun. Loved this one! Thank you to Jessica Goodman, NetGalley and Razorbill for sending me an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

5⭐️

The Legacy Club is one of the greatest secret society societies housed in New York. Members are all alumni of fancy, private prep schools where the students already have a leg up. Being invited to join The Legacy Club opens even more doors and gives it's members unlimited access to power and wealth. Five of the students nominated from Excelsior Prep to join the club made sense; all of them growing up in wealth and either children of Club members appeared on the outskirts of the club. But the sixth nominee is a surprise.

Tori is a scholarship kid from Queens who's family is on the brink of losing everything. She has no idea who nominated her. From her outside perspective, The Legacy Club comes across as a misogynistic, 'Good Ol' Boy' club that begrudgingly had started letting women in. But there is the chance of a $25,000 prize following a presentation, Tori swallows her pride to win the money for her family. But the closer she gets to The Legacy Ball, the more secrets of her late mother's are revealed. And those secrets lead to the dead body found outside The Legacy Club that day.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love reading about the snobby upper class getting what they deserve. I also love secret societies and bringing down an organization from the inside. This story was told from four POV's: Bernie, the It girl of the nominated class; Isobel, Bernie's best friend who is spiraling with a substance abuse problem; Tori, the scholarship kid who is amazed at how out of touch the rich are; and a 3rd person perspective from the night of the Ball. I like watching these characters going from out of touch to realizing that they're the problem through out the story and that they don't have to follow their "legacy."

I maybe in my 30's, but I will always devour teen drama. This read like Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars meets Riverdale and I loved everything about it. I can easily see this as a CW/Freeform show and that's the exact kind of trashy show I will always watch.

Thanks Netgalley and Razorbill for providing this ARC to me!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for the ARC!

The Legacies follows an elite social circle of high school students in New York who would do anything to get into the exclusive and elusive Legacy Club. Gaining access to this Club gives you a lifetime access to wealth and power - they look out for their own. Spend the week up to the night of the Legacy Ball where secrets come out and a dead body is found.

Who did it? How did it happen? What happens now?

Read it to find out.

An exclusive society initiation ball with lots of drama? How about this book?
Elite Club - The Legacies are an elite club with golden keys that give them access to not only the club building but also the support and friendships of very successful alumni
Nominees- but you have to be nominated during your senior year by an existing member. Bernie and Isobel were pretty much a shoo in due to family connections
Unexpected - Tori, however, is someone no one expected, being a scholarship student who no one has taken the time to get to know
Tragedy - as we follow these 3 girls, we inch closer and closer to a tragedy that happens on the night of a ball, and how everything is all connected.

If you have been following me the past few months on this platform, you probably have seen that I have been reading Jessica Goodman’s previous books since I enjoyed The Counselors last year. This one to me was such a great story that kept my attention. It’s not the most unique story I have read, but it definitely falls into the scholarship student has to fit into an upper class situation trope. But I really did root for the main characters, despite their flaws. And as for the tragic mystery, there are short chapters throughout the book that give you more and more insight as to what happened. And while I felt like there could have been things that tightened it up, and sometimes there were a few red herrings, I just really enjoyed the story.

The legacies takes you into that world of glitz, glamour and secrets. The synopsis of this book originally had me really intrigued and as i’m not partial to mystery books, I had to read it. It was a really simple read imo, sure the characters were somewhat complex, but overall everything was just easy to read. Bernie was my favourite character and while she has a her few faults, I found myself annoyed with almost most around her and I couldn’t find any part of me supporting any of the other characters. The closest was Tori, who I like but I wouldn’t say I had any strong feelings for and as for Isobel, well I don’t like her and quite frankly I don’t care to. In terms of the story, I can see what the author wanted to do with this plot and prompt but ultimately I think a good bit of it ended up being predictable - fun and intriguing ofc - but still and oddly enough, I’m not satisfied with who died, kinda wish it was someone else and nothing about this story felt like it should lead to death. I also wish we got more from the end which felt like it was missing something.

However, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get into this genre and looking for an easy read to do it.

*Thank you @netgalley and @penguinbooks / @penguinteen and the author for this ARC

This book was a mix between Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, & Big Little Lies.

It was a quick, interesting reading. I enjoyed the flashes between the present and the night of the incident. There were some twists that were a little more difficult to believe. Overall, the characters were somewhat likeable and the plot was interesting. I truly didn’t know what to expect at the end of the book until I reached it.

I haven’t read any of Goodman’s other books, but will definitely be checking them out after reading this.