Back at her dorm room, Grace wakes up Macy and they talk about what just happened. It’s…what just happened. But for three more pages. To be fair, at least Macy seems outraged on her cousin’s behalf.

But then she changes gears to a party going on the following afternoon. The school has a high tea gig once a month and Macy said it’s going to be ‘a little more festive’ and double as a welcome party for Grace. Since we never see a normal high tea function at this school, it’s impossible to tell if the party actually is more ‘festive’ or if Macy is just calling it a welcome party because she wants Grace to feel welcome.

Then they settle in to binge watch a new Neflix show.

“It’s this really cool show about a bunch of teenage vampires, witches, and werewolves all living together at a boarding school. I know it sounds a little silly, but it’s fun to imagine.”

Did…did you think that was funny?

And then we skip directly to the tea party, because nothing else about her first full day at the castle school was interesting. I guess. Macy and Grace get ready, and Grace is self-conscious about her looks.

I roll y eyes at her a second time, because “beautiful” is a bit more than a stretch – with my curly auburn hair, plain brown eyes, and the random groupings of freckles on my nose and cheeks, I’m pretty much the opposite of beautiful.

…huh?

I mean, I get it, teen girls are too hard on themselves, but…that’s her complaint? Colors? What about her colors is supposed to indicate ‘the opposite’ of beautiful? Let her claim that her curls are too frizzy, or that she has pan face, or one of the million little made-up flaws that tiktok promotes these days.

I think the word ‘auburn’ gets me the most here, because it really gives away that this is just the author describing a character and not the character criticizing herself. ‘Auburn’ is way too soft a word from someone being harsh. “Muddy color that can’t decide between red and brown” is a self-diss, not ‘auburn.’

Also, Macy has a bead curtain over her door that shocks people, but not Grace. It’s called out as being weird. This will be, in this book, the only magic that Grace is immune to. She could probably find more immunity if we didn’t spend three hundred pages pretending magic doesn’t exist, but that would be interesting so we can’t have that.

The girls arrive at the cafeteria, and Grace feels awkward so she stands by the wall and gives us loving descriptions of the décor, all of which hints at some magical creature that will be relevant later. The students are all grouped into cliques, and all of the cliques a signature aesthetic. Because there are never, for instance, any dragons that don’t want to wear size-too-small t-shirts, I guess. No witches that want to ditch the bohemian vibe. Nope, doesn’t happen.

There’s some pointless socializing in Macy’s witchy group, there’s a mean girl character who never shows up again, yadda yadda. This goes on for about a chapter.

On the big fancy buffet table full of big fancy dishes of big fancy food, Grace notices that there’s….a bunch of big orange drink coolers. Macy explains it away with an obviously fake explanation, but we later find out those have blood for the vampires to drink. But…they couldn’t have fancy blood holders? WTF? Is this a rich school or not?

Suddenly! A wild Jaxon appears! It’s very dramatic. There are, seriously, two pages describing Jaxon and his friends entering, looking hot, walking across the room, and Grace imagining making out with the hot boy. It takes extra drama because we have to linger on how cold and graceful and powerful he is, and how looking at him makes Grace feel twitterpated.

Then there’s another two pages where Jaxon, get this, picks a strawberry from the buffet and eats it while making eye contact with Grace.

LE GASP.

Grace becomes so overwhelmed with…okay, I’ll be honest, I don’t know what she’s overwhelmed with. But she does literally run out of the room.

Because DRAMA.

Grace literally races through the school until she’s good and lost, then finds the library. It’s empty because everyone is at the party, so she calms down and wanders around, admiring the décor.

Which is…stickers. The whole library is covered in funny stickers. For some reason this is awesome instead of “damaging some probably very expensive bookshelves.”

She wanders freely around the library at the magic school of magical beings and…apparently only finds the fiction section because nothing here is setting off alarm bells for our girl. Although, who knows, maybe she’s so distracted by stickers that she doesn’t notice the nonfiction section is full of magic books or dragon biology or whatever.

She hears some chanting and follows it to a room where there’s a student reading aloud from a book.

She stops mid-word, with what looks an awful lot like fury burning in her swirling black eyes.

[Chapter break]

[…] the rage in her eyes is gone. In fact, it dissipates so quickly, I can’t be sure I didn’t imagine it.

This happens almost every chapter. A dramatic final line followed immediately by nothing. Feels like something a fanfiction writer would do to make sure readers come back for the next chapter, which will take time to post. Entirely unnecessary in a book when the next chapter is right there. And so annoying. Quit promising me some action only to dismantle it in the next sentence.

This girl is Lia, and she claims that she’s just doing a research assignment. She is super friendly and wants to be best friends with Grace, so invites her up to her dorm room. They make some small talk, then they bond over the fact that they’re having a rough year. Grace has dead parents, Lia has a dead boyfriend.

In Lia’s dorm room, Lia offers to make tea. Grace has fond memories of making tea with her mother.

It’s nice to see her go through the ritual of making tea from homegrown leaves.

…???????

???????????????????????????????????????????????????

Homegrown?

A custom blend, like Grace describes, that I can understand, but growing tea leaves? You’d need less infrastructure to grow pot indoors than you would to grow tea. I mean, this is clearly an author error, but the thought of someone trying to grow tea in freaking Alaska is very funny to me.

“Wait,” I say, strangely discomfited by that fact. “What do you guys have to lie about that’s so important?”

That’s when Lia looks me straight in the eye and answers, “Everything.”

[Chapter break]

“Don’t look so scandalized,” she tells me after a few seconds of awkward silence. “I’m just teasing, Grace.”

GAH! STOP IT!