Title: School Spirit
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Genre/s: Young Adult, Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance
Synopsis:
Fifteen-year-old Izzy Brannick was trained to fight monsters. For centuries, her family has hunted magical creatures. But when Izzy’s older sister vanishes without a trace while on a job, Izzy's mom decides they need to take a break.Izzy and her mom move to a new town, but they soon discover it’s not as normal as it appears. A series of hauntings has been plaguing the local high school, and Izzy is determined to prove her worth and investigate. But assuming the guise of an average teenager is easier said than done. For a tough girl who's always been on her own, it’s strange to suddenly make friends and maybe even have a crush.Can Izzy trust her new friends to help find the secret behind the hauntings before more people get hurt?Rachel Hawkins' delightful spin-off brings the same wit and charm as theNew York Times best-selling Hex Hall series. Get ready for more magic, mystery and romance!
My Thought:
Monster slaying has never been this awesome in this new paranormal novel that Rachel Hawkins created. School Spirits is another new series you will surely have to watch out for.
Isolde “Izzy” Brannick was not your typical teenage girl. She came from a strong family of Prodigium (paranormal) hunters and she was trained all her life to follow their footsteps. But since the disappearance of her sister, Finley, Izzy have been distracted with her missions. Her mother was afraid that she can’t handle big missions on her own. She thinks she needed a break from so much stress, so she sent her on an easier mission, to banish a ghost that is haunting a school. But in order for her to do that, she has to go undercover and go to Mary Evans High.
There she will realize that going to school is more nerve-racking than staking a vampire or chasing a werewolf, that having friends is awesome and that magic doesn’t always mean there’s a Prodigium around, sometimes magic is something else entirely.
Izzy's character was so fun to read. Her snarky comments and insight about high school was entertaining. Her made-up titles for magazine articles were really funny and creative at best. It made me want to create my own magazine and write articles like How to Go On a Normal Date without Looking like a Total Spaz.
Izzy might be a Prodigium hunter with super strength and built-in Prodigium radar. But without the stake, the silver and the paranormal stuff that she do, she’s still a normal teenage girl who’s in the stage of adolescence. She wanted people to like her, to feel like she belongs and to have fun without worrying about Finn, her mother or any paranormal-related stuff. She needed to experience the normal stuff too, like dates, liking a guy, first kiss and having friends you can trust. And seeing her go through all the normal stuff makes it more relatable and amusing.
When Izzy first saw Dex, I really thought that he was gay. His fashion sense, hyper mood and talkative character gave that whole vibe to me. That’s why it’s weird for me to see that he was flirting with Izzy and Izzy was attracted to him. But when he clarified that he was straight, I was like “Well, that was AWKWARD”. It took me a lot of convincing to really absorb that information in. He just wasn’t the conventional swoony guy with six pack abs and dimples that we often read about but that serves to his advantage, I guess. He was unique, funny, a bit dorky and he’s a breath of fresh air from all the swoony YA heartthrobs in the fiction world (not that I’m complaining about them or anything).
Anyway, you will not get bored with this book because there’s always something interesting going on in each chapter. The plot has just enough balance of romance, action, drama, mystery, creepiness and fun part to keep your attention until the last page. Overall, this is a must read for all the paranormal fans out there.
My Rating
