I really did enjoy this read. I found it to be a perfect starting fantasy series, especially for readers coming over from middle grade. I thought some of structure issues could have been a little bit clearer like when some event happen at the start of the series. I also really did like the focus of friendships in this novel. I thought the book had a compelling plot and characters, but points of this book had massive information dumps that sometimes took me out of the story but I really did like the plot and the characters and would read more by this author in the future.