Legacy Strain (Isolation, #3) (2024)

Right, wrong, selfishness, sacrifice and love, all part of the chaos of a special group of warriors betrayed by a world they were supposed to protect. They are called the Omens and even the fabric that binds them is fraying as doubt, jealousy, insecurity and well-kept secrets put razor-sharp tears in their very foundation. Who can be trusted? Has someone turned on them? Will they face an enemy once considered one of them?

Even two hearts in love can become enemies when their ideals become polar opposites. Kirin has created a drug that will either be a weapon of genocide or the salvation of a world poisoned by their government and a Pharmaceuticals Corporation they were supposed to trust in. Julian must decide if Kirin has become a monster or if the lover he once knew still has a heart.
One former ally will stand against Kirin and his “Genesis Cull,” but it could cost her dearly. An unlikely ally come to her aid with the means to bring Omen Operatives together as they train for a final showdown against one of their own.

Heroes will die, but will their death be final or a re-birth into a new life, a regeneration, if you will. Lovers will learn to share in this time of turmoil, if only to feel the closeness of another. Respect will grow, and trust will be hard won. Will this family of special warriors survive? If they do, if they save the world, what cost will they pay? Where will they go? Will the world ever know of their sacrifice?

Taylor Brooke brings LEGACY STRAIN to life with high tension, deep emotional connections and vivid scenes that spill off the pages. Follow as unsung heroes become pariahs in the game of good versus evil. Witness the blurring of the lines between black and white, the gut decisions made on a hope and a prayer. Ms Brooke spares nothing to bring raw turmoil to each page and I was captured in the web she wove, once again.

I received an ARC edition from Taylor Brooke in exchange for my honest review.

Series: Isolation - Book 3
Publisher: Limitless Publishing LLC (June 6, 2017)
Publication Date: June 6, 2017
Genre: Sci-fi | Post-apocalyptic
Print Length: 259 pages
Available from: Amazon
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

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* I received an eARC from the author in exchange of an honest review.

What an awesome ending to an incredible series! I'm not sure what I was expecting as an ending to this crazy adventure. All I know is what I got blew everything out of the water. I also loved the LGBT+ representation in this novel. It's not everyday that I pick up a book that represents and delves into that community.

I have mixed feelings towards Brooklyn because of what was revealed in the end. There was finally a reason for all her guilt, which makes the story that much more intricate. I don't think I would have welcomed her with open arms after all that though. What can I say? I'm petty. I'll admit to it.

I couldn't stand Julien this time around. Who in their right mind falls for a psychopath (which ended up being redeemed in a way)? I also don't believe that love can fix someone or make them more 'understanding'. Though the omens are all genetically altered and their brains work differently, I couldn't sympathize with the situation.

When everything clicked into place, it was like a light switch flipped and finally illuminated all the dark corners of what was actually going on. I wasn't expecting that to be the outcome. The epilogue took away from the story for me because it felt like everything was too perfect. For a group of genetically modified 'people' to get somewhat of a happy ending without something coming back to bite them in the ass is, to me, an impossibility.

My Favorite Quotes:

"Sometimes reality was disorienting, sometimes nothing seemed real."

"Dead was different than gone. Something that was gone could come back. Dead was permanence."

"Perhaps the war had never been about surviving, maybe it had always been about living."

A Joyfully Jay review.

4.75 stars

This is the third and final book in the Isolation series and should not be read as a stand-alone. In the past two books, we’ve been mostly focused on Brooklyn’s story as she went from a cautious, reactionary, and uncertain young woman to a violent, angry, and wrathful killer trained by Isolation to kill anything and anyone. Including and especially clones of herself and those she cared for who were, in a way, victims as much as she was. Brooklyn stopped caring about anyone but herself, Gabriel, Dawson, and Porter. She put everything into that love, grounding herself with her three lovers … and Isolation took one of them away from her, the one she holds onto the hardest in order to preserve the remnants of her own humanity.

In this book we get to see Brooklyn become what Isolation wanted her to be: death, in human form. But Brooklyn isn’t, strictly speaking, death. She’s wrath, filled with anger and violence and with no loyalty to the people who did this to her. While she did want to destroy Isolation in the previous books, that want was a minor thing compared to her need to just get away and be with those she loved. In taking Porter, they set the final flame to the pyre of rage and anger that is Brooklyn’s new self, and like a phoenix rising from the ashes, she’s going to burn the world to ash.

Read Elizabeth’s review in its entirety here.

Wow! Legacy Stain just blew me away with all the lies, secrets, betrayal, sacrifices and redemption. Were the lies only secrets to keep everyone you love safe? Were the betrayals only sacrifices to keep the ones you love safe? I think all the characters, Brooklyn, Porter, Gabriel, Dawson, Amber, Julian were all very strong people to be able to do what they did in the end. The love they have for each other was just amazing. Will they redeem their selves in the end?

I loved how the author would keep you in the dark about what was going on and then slam you in the face with it right out of the blue. I would be like whoa I didn’t see that one coming. In my opinion when an author can keep you guessing just for a little while that is great but when she can keep you guessing right up until the end now that is astronomical.

A virus is set to be released on the world and if it is released then hundreds of thousands of people will die. Can Brooklyn and the Omens stop the release of the virus in time to save the lives of all these people? Or is it too late? Come join Brooklyn, Porter and Gabriel on their adventures to save the world and their friends.

If you have not read Legacy Strain then let me suggest that you do. It will blow your mind. Have you read the first book Omen Operation or the second book Echo Campaign? If you have not read these two books then I would suggest that you start with them first as you don’t want to miss out on the Omen’s journeys. Well and so you won’t get confused and will know what is going on.

Legacy Strain is the third and final book in the Isolation series, and boy is it intense. There's a sort of slow build sort of vibe, but also a race against time sort of vibe to the story.

Kirin and his group are on the verge of releasing a virus to destroy humanity, and Brooklyn and her group are determined to stop it. With Juneau Malloy in the middle of it all, as well as the government stepping in to try and take down this terrorist organization, as they call it, you can definitely feel the anxiety ramping up as you flip through each page.

Which group will come out on top? Will humanity suffer, or will Kirin's virus turn humanity into something more? Can Brooklyn and her friends stop them in time? You'll have to read it and see how it ends.

I really enjoyed Legacy Strain. It was exciting, tense, and full of heartache, love, death, destruction, and hope. There's a lot of emotion compiled into one story, and I really liked that.

The characters are still so developed, and you kind of have a love-hate relationship with quite a few of them. Plus, it was nice to see an LGBT-friendly relationship between some of them without it seeming too forced.

Overall, Legacy Strain is a fantastic ending to an awesome trilogy. I highly recommend this entire series. It's amazing. I loved it, and I'm kind of sad it's over. Definitely pick this one up and start reading it today!

Things heat up and intensify with betrayal, lies, deceit, secrets, sacrifices, hope, denial, confusion, and so much more goes on within this battle for right/wrong, genocide/revolution. There are some many direction. So many paths. This one has what will be needed to make this series stronger. I caution to not start in the middle. Go to the beginning and take it for a full on ride. This YA Post-Apocalyptic Sci-fi reads has a bit of it all that will take you one a journey you will not soon forget.

An incredible end to an amazing series.

The finale of the Isolation series definitely keeps up and delivers upon the inertia of the first two books. As with the other two, all of the individual character's stories come together seamlessly to tell a story set on a now-epic scale.

As far as conclusions go, I was very satisfied with this one. It tied up all of the loose ends very nicely, and left me feeling with a strong feeling of completion to the story of Brooklyn and her friends. I don't want to give much away, but I can say confidently that I was very surprised.
Additionally, the inclusion of LGBTQ characters at the heart of the series is a refreshing. It is really a breath of fresh air to see LGTBQ characters at the center of a story without it being the character's defining feature.

As with all good finales, the book is emotional and action-packed start to finish. The pace is fast, and parts are moving and plots constantly being revealed. I was entertained and invested all the way through.

This book was even more intense than the second one, but both the second and third were very similar. It was still hugely about the dynamic between the characters, but this time even more complicated. So much love and hate and trust and distrust being bandied about, so many combinations of the four. Things changed on a dime, and often. It was all very unexpected. Primal, too. Which I guess was part of the point. There was a lot of human vs. nonhuman emotional stuff going on. I think I liked everyone a little less in this book, because they all seemed to be such great examples of the idea that people are all inherently terrible. They all did things to make people not like them. But they were forgiven by other people who also did terrible things. In the end, they all loved each other. That’s great, but it’s just too much of a mess for me. I’m glad they can work things through however they can. But it’s a no thanks from me.

Also, I said in my review of the first book that I fell in love with Gabriel even though she was definitely not my type of person. That changed in the second book and I still didn’t like her much in this one. She’s just bad at the emotions thing. Either she turns them off completely or she’s just so full of rage and deadly power that it’s terrifying. I like people with a better balance. Like Brooklyn, who then has her own dark side which makes me dislike her too…Okay, yes, these people do good things sometimes, really good things, and that’s fine, everyone has a balance of good and bad inside them—though I don’t really believe in good or bad because of this—but I’d rather not deal with the whole mess. I just couldn’t like the people. They were too complicated for me to be able to focus on and enjoy the positives of their personalities. And honestly, I feel like so much of the dynamic was centered around those who were in relationships that those who weren’t seemed much more like secondary characters. Which kind of makes sense but also seems a bit unfair.

But this book really did make me feel. There was a lot less rage in this book than the last one; I think it had dulled by this point, or everything was too confusing for me to figure out who to be mad at (i.e. everyone but really no one). But there was a lot of sadness. And I changed my mind about people many times. Some people just had to die, but wait—no, they’re human enough to be changed—but they’re still too dangerous to let live. I was definitely just a spectator in this book; I could not find a way to pick sides at all. I was a spectator until the grief. I am never strong enough to resist the grief.

As for the actual plot, it went pretty much as expected, or at least as much as it could given that it turned on its head every ten pages. I mean we basically got there in the end, but almost everyone was up to something secret that turned the tides a bit. But nothing too surprising or out of left field. I said in my review of the last book that the characters drove the story but the plot made me want to continue. However in this book it was definitely less of the plot and more of the characters that was the draw. Everyone was just so gosh darn complicated. (:

So is it a good book? A fitting ending to the series? Yes it is. Is it one I’m going to read again? Probably not. The onslaught of emotional drama is not something to dive into lightly or frequently. You have to be ready to be changed, at least for a short time.

See the full review on my blog, Awesome Book Assessment.

*Be sure to check out my blog post for this book here!

I didn't think this series could get any better. It did.

The first book in this series, Omen Operation, grabbed my attention from the first chapter. I didn't want to put it down, and fell in love with the whole plot right away. The second book, ECHO Campaign, was even better, if that's possible. When it ended though, my guts were a mess. I wanted to know what would happen next, but I really didn't know what would happen, or if my nails could handle another round of chewing.

The revelations that happened in the last parts of the book blew me away. I hadn't expected the twists and explanation of Brooke's whole story, basically. It was such an amazing way to tie it all together, and end the adventure. I was super nervous that the ending would be an anti-cliche attempt to be dramatic, which probably would have given me a major book hangover. Luckily, it was an ending I enjoyed a ton, and gave the story a finality that makes me want to read it several more times.

The writing for this series is wonderful, and stayed consistent all the way through. I loved the flow, and the mix of betrayal, hope, sacrifices, and the all important struggle between right and wrong. This is a wonderful series, and I would recommend it to anyone. If it sounds at all like something you'd enjoy, give it a try - I'd be shocked if you didn't enjoy it.

*I was given a complimentary eBook copy of this book, from the author via Xpresso Book Tours, to read in exchange for an honest review.

~Rose
@Desert Rose Reviews

Est-ce que j’étais prête à dire au revoir à cette série ? Je ne sais pas. Pour tout dire, je me suis attachée à cette série. J’avoue que le premier tome ne m’avais pas trop emballée mais arrivée au second, c’était la claque dans ma figure :3
Brooklyn nous a offert un excellent combat final. Bon ok, je m’attendais à un truc ouffisime mais je me suis contentée de ce qu’on m’avait donné. Je m’explique.

Brooklyn qui est notre guerrière de service et qui devait avoir une vengeance de malade se retrouve, malheureusem*nt légèrement effacée de ce tome. Pourquoi, comment ? Ben la raison est simple et pourtant j’aurais préféré faire ça autrement. Oui parce qu’au final la personne, ou plutôt les personnes qui sont mis en avant sont Kirin et Julian. Alors ces deux-là nous l’ont mis un peu à l’envers entre le tome 2 et le 3. Ceux ne sont pas mes préférés non plus malgré leur histoire.

Les autres alliés de Brooklyn ne sont pas en reste mais… bof bof je dirais. Pourtant, ils restent tous un éléments plus ou moins important du combat final.
Juneau qui est notre super connard ben… il s’est vite fait évincé dans ce tome. Ce qui au final m’a un peu déçue (vous inquiétez pas, je ne vous spoil pas lol). Pourtant, il avait bien réussi son coup dès le début du tome… arf…

Au final, ce dernier tome reste quand même une réussite. Même si ma préférence reste au tome 2 qui a quand même su me captiver du début à la fin. Taylor Brooke a de l’idée et je l’encourage pleinement à poursuivre sur cette voie. Vivement sa prochaine série !

A good finish to a great series.
I never really connected with many of the characters, being only invested in Gabriel and Brooklyn. Brooklyn's character in particular seemed untouchable and could have benefited from further development and but the interconnectedness of all the characters and the plot drove a sense of urgency throughout.
Well worth a read.

I liked the basic idea but beacause I have not read the other books in this series I felt like I was missing out on something else as I fully did not love this book, It had some nice ideas but was not for me fully.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.