This book left a bad taste in my mouth :'(. A pale-skinned, blue-eyed race has been practicing eugenics for years, and they grandfather in our blonde waifish protagonist to their private school. She almost didn't qualify because she has brown eyes. But hey, at least she's not like those other "stupid" or boorish "chubby, brown-skinned" races, who are inferior intellectually and morally, and - at best - are grateful for any menial labor the pale race throws their way.
....
See what I mean?

But hey, maybe you're not in the mood for positive messaging in your middle grade fantasy. Maybe you're just here for the magic and glitter. Ok, let's talk glitter:

Sophie the Snowflake is the Bella-est of Bella Swan's: Wah, I'm so smart and magical and misunderstood and well-ahead of my peers. I feel like a loner even in my own family. But when a magical teenager shows up and tells me how amazing I am, I instantly romanticize him, allow him to kidnap me, adopt his family as my own, and want to abandon my life for his world.

The "wise", emo protagonist is tropetastic, as is the magical boyfriend and the hidden magical race and being whisked off to magic school... I can't be mad that these tropes are in this book; they're tropes for a reason, and any one of them could be a sub-genre onto themselves. But there is something particularly icky about how the tropes were handled in this book. Sophie isn't an older teen on the cusp of adulthood, uncertain of her future, ready to leap into a wild romance or adventure that will test and shape her. Sophie is 12! She is not even a teenager, being treated with the same level of maturity as a high school senior. No upperclassman should be whisking her anywhere. Fitz's behavior is predatory: He grooms her by telling her how special and unique she is, negs her family and her school, then isolates Sophie. He makes decisions for her without informing her, consulting her, or waiting for consent. He insults everything about her, from her intellect to her diet, while championing her looks and anything she has in common with him, like her magic. He is an arrogant, racist elitist, who immediately makes her feel ashamed of her family and upbringing, and insinuates that Sophie will only continue to be special to him if she molds herself to be exactly like him.

A looot of red flags. A LOT! There are far superior magical academy or paranormal boyfriend or parallel world stories out there.