Really 4.5 stars for the sheer pleasure of the read.

I wasn’t going to read this one. I am not a fan of a lot of YA fiction, the Twilight series, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children etc. There are always exceptions, though, and this book falls into that category. My lunch stains, when I couldn’t stop reading in order to eat, are a testament to that (just as well it wasn’t a library book).

At the beginning, I thought that River was a well drawn introverted troubled teenager, who wants to take control of her life by making friends with the popular kids, who happen to be a family of suspected witches called the Graces.

Midway I realised that River was simply not seeing how more damaged and isolated the Graces were than her, how they were actively hurting themselves by clinging to their beliefs in magic and family.

As I suspected she would, River turns the tables on the lot of them by the end of the book. I actually saw the end and the revelation of the secret coming, simply because that is what I would have written it. That didn’t reduce the enjoyment, though.

Magic may or may not be real in this book, this is not The Craft. It has far more depth and a character with balls and is no Twilight. It is more a coming of age tale with the possible existence of magic as a backstory.