I could not put this book down; I mean, seriously, I managed to read it in 12 hours. It kept me sucked in the whole time. This is a stand-alone book, and you don’t need to read a full series to enjoy it, which is just what I was looking for! After reading Bookshops and Bonedust, I needed something faster-paced, and I am right in the middle of re-reading the ACOTAR series with the new releases coming soon, and I just needed a quick break. This YA Fantasy with a touch of mystery was the perfect thing!
Our main character Cam is just a normal 15-year-old human going to a school full of paranormal students with paranormal abilities. One day during a fight at the school, he has a vision; maybe he isn’t so normal after all. That happens fairly quickly in the book; we are introduced to Cam and his best friend, who happens to be a witch, right at the beginning, and the fight happens fairly quickly into the book. The vision Cam has just so happens to be the murder of a girl he doesn’t recognize in a place he doesn’t recognize, and we spend the rest of the story with Cam while he makes new friends and discovers more about his strange gift while also trying to stop the murder from happening.
The school is full of different creatures, which turn out to be like different cliques. You have the werewolves, and there are the sprites, and witches and vampires and the humans… They are in a small town, so we don’t get to deep dive into each of the factions, but we do get a little bit of backstory on each. We mainly deal with the werewolves and the witches, but there is some stuff about the sprites too. Not so much about the vampires, so don’t go thinking this is going to be a Twilight book with the vampires vs. werewolves.
The relationships between Cam and the other characters worked so well for me; he has his one friend he has had since childhood and his parents, which are basically the only established relationships we have going into this book. Every other relationship we get to watch him build gives us real insight into each character, and I feel that it made each new character more beloved than his original friend. The new friendships give it such a found family feeling; one of them is a cool kid, another is an unpopular girl, another has a heart of stone until they get to know him, and they are all thrown together because of our main character Cam. Cam himself is very much the awkward teenager, emphasis on awkward. Especially after he has his first psychic vision, he wants to pretend it didn’t happen so it doesn’t draw attention to himself. He just wants to belong, and through the book he finds a group he belongs with.
This was a very fast-paced book that I never wanted to put down. Something was happening all the time; I never felt bored while reading this book. It felt like at every turn there was something new happening, but it never felt overly forced. There is also a very diverse set of characters in the book, not just with the different magical creatures but with different ethnicities and there is LGBTQ+ representation. The queer romance is a big part of the story as well; it doesn’t go into the realm of smut at all; it’s more pining romance and flirting and dancing around the real romance. We go from all that flirting into the real romance and real stakes in what this romance means, not just because it’s two boys, but because Cam is human and the other boy is something else.
There is a good twist that builds throughout the book, and even though I guessed the twist halfway through, it didn’t make the story any less enjoyable because there were still parts of it that I didn’t guess. Even though it seemed obvious from my point of view, we as the reader can see why it wasn’t obvious from Cam’s point of view. Cam is written as this awkward and mostly oblivious teenager who just wants to fit in, so when people around him are acting strange, he notices it but takes it at face value. He is also focused on trying to solve this murder with his friends, which makes it more believable that he wouldn’t notice everything happening around him.
By the end of the book, I think it wrapped up nicely, if not a bit quickly. I am someone who wants more at the end to watch everything settle nicely. I think one more chapter would have been nice just so we got to see how things developed in the end without having to guess at it. That might be part of the fun from the author, though, because we don’t get to know exactly what happened and we can fill in our own guesses for where we think the characters ended up going and how Cam’s life changed, because his life changes a lot from the beginning to the end.
I really ended up enjoying this book; this book gets 4.75/5 stars from me. This book made me pick out a few more books from F.T. Lukens to add to my TBR; he does a lot of stand-alone books, and sometimes a good stand-alone is just the palate cleanser that I need between series. I think anyone looking for a quick read that enjoys YA Fantasy, queer romance, and paranormal school would really enjoy this book. It’s a fast read with lots of diverse characters and an interesting plot that keeps you wanting more.
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