I was expecting this book to be, in all honesty, crap. It wasn't, nor was it amazing. 
 I actually really liked the first half of the book, it was pretty mysterious and interesting- not enough for me to read the book outside of bus journeys, but enough for me to wish the bus to work took a little bit longer. 
 You'd think when the shit starts to go down, the book would get better, huh? For me, no. When shit starts getting heavy it all became too heavy and dull for me to get interested. It was all paragraphs of boring latin and gaellic again and again. A couple of times I would appreciate but I got so fed up of spellbook bullshit. The magic in the book wasn't really explained enough. Actually, let me clarify, the interesting magic stuff was ignored whereas we were treated to loads of text book crap about ayncient magyck. 
 Lena had so much potential to be a really cool girl. Then. She. Got. Ruined. 
 She went from being, yeah, i'm different chyyuh, so what? to, all I want from life is to go to prom and get jewelry. Oooh look at the pretty decorashons and snow flakes. so pwetty. Lame. 
 On the upside, I thought the whole Gaitlin as a southern town stuck in a time warp was a pretty interesting setting.