Don't get me wrong here. I don't hate this book nor have any bad intentions towards the author who dedicated her life to write this, but it would be foolish to raise it one star higher. This is another hackneyed, formulaic novel about a teenager who is a witch and got send into a magical school and fall in love with the sexiest guy and, in short, be the super Mary-Sue of the entire series. 
 Let me get this straight: people who want to rekindle the fame of Harry Potter, don't look at the "objects" that made Harry Potter famous (wizard, boy, super hero, evil villain, magic school) but explored the "theme", the "moral" of it. If an author wants to write a story because he wants to demonstrate how "awesome" his writing skill/imagination is, the author fails. A writer writes because he needs to communicate to the audience a deep message, profound meaning that cannot express merely through a short speech.J.K. Rowling demonstrates the theme of brutality, death, power, immortality, courage in face of adversities, loyalty, discrimination, rank/status...etc., in her novel and that is what makes it brilliant. The next big things are plot/twist/characterization/world building/logic. 
 Hex Hall makes me feel like I am reading a story written by a fifth-grade student: no dimensional character, no appropriate world building (a werewolf attacks a new coming student???, the main character performing magic without regulations???), no polished prose, no this no that. And this is the biggest thing I hate about magic novel. THE BIGGEST THING: 
 - removable good/evil side. 
 During the story, Sophie is a demon (spoiler, duh) and she can change to the demon side and kill her grandmother and later go through the Removal to expunge that demon side. 
 I MEAN, HOW STUPID IS THAT? 
 This is a classic example of Beautiful Creatures, where the main character will be claim as Dark or Light (ahahhahaa, stupid, stupid, stupid). Realistic magic do not have claim on a character's moral. A character, through personality development and self-exploraton, through battles and wars, decided their own moral. Magic is a tool, magic is not God, magic is not a selector. 
 In Harry Potter, there is the dark side and the light side, but each character chose what side to go in. In case of the Malfoys family, they are corrupt by wealth and power and are cowards so they chose to follow the "Strong" leaders, they choose to follow the "Death Eaters". Or feeble Peter Pettingrew, or mental Bellatrix Lestrange... There are logical reasons why men can succumb to savagery and selfishness. 
 Another thing is the main character: Sophie - sounded exactly like a person who can't wait to say... "I HAVE MAGIC, I AM THE MOST AWESOME BEING EVER, ALL SHOULD HAIL ME AS THEIR HERO!" Most Mary-Sues character fall into the category of "loner, outcast and suddenly develop super ability skill and got picked up by the hot guy/girl and save the day." 
 Harry Potter sounds like a Mary Sue, but J.K.Rowling has the talent to portray him as real and fleshy as possible: during the novel, we saw Harry's inability to accept fame, his shunning away from attention, his wanting to be "just Harry". He is not the best of the best either, look at Dumbledore, Hermione...etc., his score was not the highest nor he was super good-looking and have all this female-drooling-over muscles. He is a skinny boy who is tortured by his destiny and try to climb out of it/perform it to the best of his ability. I understand Harry's loneliness, I understand Harry's thirst for love and family, I understand Harry's motive to kill Voldemort once and for all. I don't understand Sophie's wanting to demonstrate her witchcraft skill and get pissed off because a guy said she was clumsy. 
 There are many flaws to say, but I don't feel the need to. In short, I just want to say that: 
 A good story does not equals a loner hero + awesome ability + some stupid actions 
 Don't try to repeat the fame of Harry Potter by copying it. Authors should be as original as possible, with inspirations from others. An author should not spending day glorify in his character steal the spotlight and becoming "The Chosen One". An author should think deeper than that: about the weakness of human, the choice that echoes through our life, the death we kill that haunts our moral, the question of identity, the desperation and doom and tired pursuits, the dynamic relationship between characters (The bad guy is not always bad, the good guy is not always good...) and tried to be logical as possible (why the bad guy is bad? saying he wants to take over the world is not enough, what influences human's decisions to be as they are?). In short, no matter what genre one is writing, there are some fundamental laws for a novel to be good. Fail to adhere to these laws and let only emotion/imagination/enthusiasm rule your writing can possibly do serious damages.