A To Z Challenge Book Review: Zodiac Academy: The Awakening By Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti

My letter “Z” pick for the A To Z Reading Challenge was ZODIAC ACADEMY: THE AWAKENING by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti.

Within a chapter or two I had a wonderful feeling this was going to be a five star read. I loved Darcy and Tory, twins who find out they are Fae princesses and get whisked off to the Fae realm and the Zodiac Academy to learn to harness their elemental powers. They have the unheard of gift of all four elements – earth, air, fire, and water, and because of their bloodline are immensely powerful (though novices at wielding the power). This pisses off a lot of faeries, including the current heirs to the throne, four insanely hot, well-built guys with loads of power but nowhere near the levels of Darcy and Tory. They make it their mission to bully the girls into dropping out of the academy and giving up any claim to the throne.

Then I slid to four and a half stars as punctuation and spelling errors slipped in and every three paragraphs someone smirked. Soon I knocked it down to four stars as the authors began using the wrong words, the wrong spellings of words, and even made-up words that kind of sounded like the word they were going for. I realize this was a self-pub, but did the authors not hire an editor?

Then I plunged to three and a half stars when the relentless, vicious abuse – verbal, emotional and physical – from their classmates (especially the four heirs) and teachers (who either outright abuse or look the other way while it’s being done) got to be a little too much. I understand the “bully romance” genre, but if you want to show strong protagonists, there has to be a moment where they say “no more!” and stand up for themselves. What we got were a few nudges in the right direction that were quickly slapped down.

Finally, I devolved to three stars when the girls continually chose to overlook the truly torturous, cruel bullying simply because the four heirs and a certain teacher are just so damn hot and like to flirt between abuse sessions. This goes on until the end of the book where they are both beyond demeaned and degraded and barely avoid being murdered by the hotties – still without fighting back beyond a token effort. I was good and done with the all of them by that point.

We’ll leave it at three stars and I’ll pass on the rest of the series.