This is both the best and worst type of YA book. High school setting, one aloof, attractive, unattainable male, bitchy popular girls doing bitchy popular girl things, even a school dance scene where the heroine gets to blow everyone away with her secret hidden beauty. But with MAGIC. I'd love to feel superior and say I hated it but, not gonna lie, it was AWESOME.Sophie Mercer has been living with her mother for 16 years, moving from place to place every time her inconvenient witch-ness is revealed. However, when a love spell goes terribly wrong, Sophie is forced to go to Hecate Hall, a boarding school for the Prodigum - the witches, shape-shifters and faeries of the world, and one vampire student, Jenna, who Sophie happens to be rooming with. But the school has recently been shaken up by the death of dark witch Holly, Jenna's former room-mate, who seemingly died from blood loss...As I said, this book has a lot of cliches: it's essentially just a high school film plot-line with a some paranormal twists. However, I really liked it. The characters were all really likable, and although the popular girls were initially branded as pure evil, they became increasingly rounded over the course of the book, meaning that everything wasn't in unrealistic black and white morality. I liked the magic system, not in the sense of the magic itself, but in the sense of the system of categorising magical beings, which will hopefully go on with future books. Nothing new, but done pretty well. Plus I'm a sucker for these sort of stories. I love those damn secret hidden beauty scenes.

This was a great start to the series and a quick read. Love Sophie!