In a world where people are gifted with different types of magics that correlate with the tides/moon phase, a teen mage must unravel the secret behind the death of her former friend and the secret society that she was caught up in. Emory is a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar magics, yet her healing magic is mediocare at best. Yet what happened to her the previous summer haunts her, what happened when she stumbles in on her ex best friend and a group of the most talented students committing a ritual that results in everyone dying but Emory.... she can't remember what happened or why and she'll do anything to figure it out. The only problem is that her own magic has changed since that incident and now she is discovering she has forbidden magic and that the only person to help her is the school's most reclusive student and her former best friend's brother. As Emory seeks answers she'll find herself drawn into the secret society and a world of privelege and power. Unfortunately for me this book fell completely flat after the 30% mark. I tried and tried to make this book work but I was completely bored and it was such a trudge to make it to the end. This book was SLOW and so long for no reason whatsoever. It's the first book in the series and I am not interested in continuing it at all. Emory is so annoying and there is literally NO chemistry between any of the characters. The mystery itself was boring and I really wish it wasn't. This book was advertised as Ninth House meets A Deadly Education, two book series that I absolutely adore and yet this one completely missed the mark in all cases. The characters weren't interesting, the mystery felt lacking, the pacing was clunky and slow, and honestly this kind of felt like a mess. I pushed myself to finish this books in hopes that it would get better, yet it didn't. Maybe it's a case of "its me not you" but for a book that features a magical school, murder mystery, and some romance, it should have been perfect for me yet it just wasn't. If you enjoy super slow magical school mystery stories then give this a go, maybe it'll work for you.

*Thanks Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, Margaret K. McElderry Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*