Firespell by Chloe Neill

Lily gets sent to boarding school. Boarding school sits on underground tunnel playground where dark things happen. Lily falls in with strange girl who gets her involved in fighting bad guys with magic. Popular girls hate new girl. Hot guy who is part of the magic people. Blah freakin' blah.

But for the lack of vampires and hormones I could have easily been reading a House of Night installment. Granted, it's better written than HON but then, so is the phone book.

Neill has fallen victim to the same plague that so many YA writers are suffering from these days- Unoriginality. It was cute at first, really, everyone jumping on the dark fiction bandwagon but now crap is getting published as books that should have gone straight to comics.

There's even a freakin' werewolf in this book. NOT EVERY STORY NEEDS A RANDOM WEREWOLF. I hereby vow to NOT read anything that has a werewolf thrown in JUST TO HAVE ONE. STOP putting werewolves into stories that are NOT ABOUT WEREWOLVES. Here we have all these neat magic users, it all makes sense and then ONE RANDOM FREAKIN' WEREWOLF. Fail Neill. Fail.

I hope it's resemblance to pretty much everything that's been published recently with a dark cover slapped on it pays off. The only reason to sell out is for the dough and I can at least respect that.

This book doesn't make bunnies cry, oddly enough, due only to the fact that Neill's writing is smooth, the story is well paced, clean and free of plot holes- if a bit lacking in detail. Plus 1 star. I like the character of Lily, she's a smart sassy chick and she didn't annoy me. Plus 1 more star.

Read Armstrong's Darkest Power's series if you want something supernatural.
Read the Harry Potter series if you want to bond with a poor boarding school kid.
Read Brigg's Mercy Thompson series if you want REAL werewolves.