Obsessed or annoyed, pick your side

This book gave me:

♊ Twin heroines forced to survive, not just thrive
🔥 Four morally gray heirs who are actually ruthless
💔 Relationships built through tension, pain, and power shifts
⚡ Magic tied to identity, status, and control
👑 A world where power decides your worth, and everyone knows it

The Plot

Tory and Darcy Vega are living in the mortal world when they discover they are actually Fae, specifically, the lost heirs to the throne of Solaria. They’re taken to Zodiac Academy, where students are ranked by power and ruled socially by four heirs: Darius, Caleb, Seth, and Max.

The heirs see the twins as a threat to their dominance and make it their mission to break them. The academy becomes less about education and more about survival, where magic, status, and cruelty dictate everything.

As the twins fight to claim their place, they uncover deeper truths about their lineage, their powers, and the dangerous political structure of Solaria. Trust is scarce, alliances shift, and attraction develops in the worst possible places.

My Breakdown

I read Zodiac Academy a while ago, and I didn’t review it until now because I wasn’t sure I could recommend it. I couldn’t stop reading it and progressed very deeply into the series, but there were things that didn’t work for me.

So, Zodiac Academy is, in a way, the most controversial book I’ve reviewed, in the sense that readers either love it or hate it. It has super fans and big haters at the same time.

Zodiac Academy contains two tropes I keep repeating that I don’t like: bullying and age gap. And this book pretty much calls me a big fat liar to my face because I couldn’t put it down until almost the end of the series. So I hate bullying, but then there’s something about the train-wreck effect that you just cannot stop reading and hoping for a better ending. I was crushed for Darcy at the end of book one, and Darcy and Orion are my favorite couple, despite the age gap.

Many critiques focus on the level of writing. I cannot say I was disturbed by that at all. I was captivated the entire read. They have mastered cliffhangers in an awe-inspiring way, making it impossible to put the book down. They also manage to create compelling characters. The tension was gripping. So maybe they don’t have the best grammar, but they are exceptionally effective writers.

I read ten of the twelve books in the series. At the end of book ten, it felt like the extra books were mostly intended to make more money for the authors rather than serve an actual plot requirement.

Zodiac Academy was a real emotional roller coaster for me. Maybe some people will think that seems silly because, again, Zodiac Academy does not present itself as a very serious piece of literature. But it gripped me in a way that many very appreciated romantasy just didn’t manage to.

I will also add that the spice is one of the best that I’ve ever read in romance. There was always something working there. It was either very moving and emotional or very shocking and sexy. In many popular and respected romance and romantasy, I sometimes just fast-read the spice because it doesn’t interest me. Spice for the sake of spice, to me, is just a waste of pages. It can have different hooks, but it has something to grip you.

What didn’t work for me

What I mainly didn’t like in the book—and I will say in advance, many readers love exactly what I dislike, so this is definitely a taste thing—I had a hard time with the humor at times. I also had a hard time with them creating a character who is both in the mafia and Italian in this romantasy world. Do we really need to export those lame stereotypes to fantasy?

Some of the humor can be very juvenile. BUT, I acknowledge that it is one of the main hooks for some readers.

I also read Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac. Another dark Academia, this time with a reverse harem. It is set in the same world as Zodiac Academy, prior to the events of Zodiac Academy, and can be read independently. I loved the first books, but the increasing juvenile humor had me DNF the series at some point.

The entire Zodiac Academy series is available on Kindle Unlimited (as of this writing). Writing this review made me feel like retuning to the story, so I started listening to Zodiac Academy: The Awakening on audio.

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