Marie Luu's Beautiful Creatures

Legend, written by Marie Lu, is a dystopian sci-fi novel for young adults. It is the first book in an epic trilogy that is continued in Prodigy and Champion. Based on a retelling of Les Miserables, Legend is “impossible to put down and even harder to forget” (Kami Garcia, author of Beautiful Creatures).

Set in a futuristic Los Angeles, Legend is told from the perspective of two main characters from contrasting backgrounds, June and Day. In this novel, the United States of America no longer exists, but has been replaced by two warring nations, the Republic and the Colonies.
A trial is hosted each year in the Republic to determine who joins the army in fighting the Colonies. June Iparis, born into an elite family and “groomed for success
in the Republic's highest circles”, is also the country’s shining prodigy, the only person to have scored a perfect 1500 in her Trial.
Living in the poorer sectors of the Republic, and on the run from Republican authorities, is Day, wanted for “assault, arson, theft, destruction of military property and hindering the war effort”. After finding out that someone in his family has caught the Plague, Day is determined to find a cure and breaks into the hospital.
When June’s brother, Captain Metias Iparis, is killed while on a mission to oversee lab shipments at the hospital, Day immediately becomes the prime suspect. After Metias’s death, June is told that she will graduate from university immediately to join the military, and is set the task of hunting down Day, which she readily agrees to, seeking to avenge her brother.
June is then injured in a fight after a failed scheme to capture Day. Ironically, Day rescues her from the fight and treats her wounds, not knowing who she is. They begin to develop feelings for each other, but when June realises who Day really is, she feels obliged to turn him in to the Republic.
Day is captured and tortured for information about a rebel group, the Patriots, who are trying to overthrow the Republican government.
However everything is not what it seems. Day insists that he did not kill June’s brother, and after taking a closer look at the photos of Metias’s corpse, June realises that there were actually two knife wounds – one in the shoulder where Day claimed to have hit him, and another in his chest. Who, then, could have murdered Metias? And what other ulterior motives could they have?

My favourite part of the book is when June hacks into the Republic’s database and finds Day’s real Trial scores, also a perfect 1500/1500. This is when she realises for sure that something is off with the Republican government. It throws a really big wrench in the whole plot and makes it all the more exciting to read.

The author of Legend, Marie Lu, was born in Wuxi, China in 1984. She had moved to the United States by the age of 5 with her family and currently lives in Los Angeles, California. The inspiration for Legend came one afternoon while Marie was watching Les Miserables, and wondered how the relationship between a notorious criminal and a famous detective might be portrayed in a more modern setting.

I highly recommend this book to young adult readers, as it combines some very interesting themes and ideas to create an absolutely amazing dystopian novel, full of exciting plot twists and
backstabbing.