Thank you very much to D.E Night, Stories Untold and Netgalley for providing me with a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, I made the choice to DNF this book at the 31% mark.

This book is about 16 year old orphan Ivy, who discovers her magical family and powers, and is invited to attend the ‘Halls of Ivy’ magical school.

At the start of the book, we are thrown into an extremely complicated magical world, however, the book’s world building in the book was far too vague and over-complex, meaning I was left very confused throughout most of the book. This was not helped by the overly simplistic writing.

I found Ivy’s character very bland with no discernible traits, which meant I found it impossible to root for her. Her dialogue felt unnatural, and she spoke and acted more like a 12 year old than a 16 year old - throughout reading the book, I was surprised at reminders of how she was my age! Since this was a middle grade book, it was probably more suitable to have the protagonist be roughly the same age as the target audience (the general rule of thumb for middle-grade, YA and NA books). I speculate that Izy was made 16 to avoid too many comparisons to Harry Potter.

As a writer and artist myself, I understand that all pieces of art are in some way or another inspired by others, which is perfectly fine. However, the inspiration this book draws from the Harry Potter universe does show very heavily in this book, so bare that in mind before reading. I think this book is a definite example of how Harry Potter influenced the middle-grade fiction scene - whether the influence was ultimately for better or for worse is debatable.

Some of the plot points and twists were very spoon-feed - although this book is aimed at youngish audiences, I think a lot of middle grade books don’t give their audience enough credit, and the plot is told in unnatural explanation dialogue, rather than shown in the story.

Although this book is written in 3rd person, scattered throughout the book are random, unnecessary and harmful comments negative comments about how people’s bodies look, including a ‘comedic’ line about how one character’s face was as “unfortunate looking as a [dragon’s] back end” because it was full of scars. These horrible and negative views aren’t the sort of views we want to teach children. Scars are not ever something to be ashamed of. I have a lot because of my physical disability, and that’s fine!!! They are my battle scars.

If this line as a one-off occurrence, I would have been happier to overlook it as an error in wording, but it is accompanied by a range of overtly fatphobic comments, disguised as ‘comedy’. I’ll include some hear, as I cannot describe them myself. “Helga was the type who considered eating the best sort of bodybuilding.”

To conclude, I had to DNF this book for a variety of reasons. I mean no disrespect towards the author or publisher, these are criticisms combined with my personal taste in books.