3.5 Stars

When River moves to a new town with her mother, she becomes just like everyone else and quickly falls under the spell of The Graces - a family thought to have magical powers. But unlike others, River soon becomes one of them, and finds herself wrapped up in magical secrets and feels like she belongs for the first time in her life. But people have secrets, including River, and does magic actually exist?

This was a nice, atmospheric book which I think really suited the time of year I was reading it well (Halloween, obviously). This book isn't for people who love very obvious magic in their books but more for readers who love having the question posed on them on what is actually going on, and what's real or not real, magic or coincidence?

I think some of the styling in this was done quite well, such as never actually knowing River's real name, only the name she identified herself with but I think some of the description building lacked in little ways. I never really got a proper idea of what River looked like (though having met Laure Eve at a signing a few years ago, I kind of ended up picturing River looking like her), and the characters with the best description were definitely the Graces themselves and they came alive on the page.

There were parts of this that were a bit juvenile for me, and it does suffer from some YA tropes like the 'absentee parent who suddenly starts to care.' I also was a bit uncomfortable at times at the throwing around of certain words such as when Summer is pressuring River about possibly being a "lesbian" because she hasn't shown interest in guys, and the constant use of 'mentally unstable' to describe Marcus.

I did like how this book ended, and I will be reading the next one.