SHADOWSPELL ACADEMY

In a bid to save her family, Wild braves brutal entrance exams for Shadowspell Academy.

Texan farm girl Wild lives with her ailing father and younger twin siblings, Billy and Sam. Her mother has passed, and her older brother was killed in an accident at the academy. Now another recruitment letter has appeared, this time addressed to Billy, with an added threat that their whole family will be destroyed if he doesn’t show. Wild shears off her long hair and sets off in his place. But from the moment she heads off to upstate New York, she is faced with constant danger, finally being forced into a helicopter with other captive teens. Wild is a natural contender in the perilous Culling Trials, putting her intuition for danger, penchant for fighting, and love of puzzles to work. A team of misfits forms around her, slowly burgeoning into friendships. But students begin disappearing, and an assassin may be trailing Wild. Suddenly, Wild’s entangled in a mystery, and she’ll do anything to keep her team safe. Her journey leans heavily on tropes derived from Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, with less focus on worldbuilding or character development, leaving little to propel readers through the never-ending gauntlets. Unkind jokes at the expenses of a fat character, a character on the spectrum, and gay people are unredeemed by character growth. All major human characters are white.

An uninspired slog through another magical boarding school.