Veronica Mars meets Percy Jackson and the Olympians in an appealing, if not groundbreaking, series opener. After one too many well-intentioned spells goes awry, 16-year-old half-witch Sophie Mercer is forcibly enrolled at Hecate Hall, a school off the Georgia coast that serves as a juvenile hall for the magical beings called Prodigium, including witches, warlocks, faeries, shape-shifters, werewolves and a vampire. Sophie lacks her classmates’ knowledge of Prodigium mores but successfully avoids being recruited into shallow Queen Bee Elodie’s coven. This gutsy move costs her socially, but Sophie bonds with her roommate, the pink-obsessed vampire Jenna, and crushes wildly on super-cute bad boy Archer Cross. When students turn up drained of their blood, Jenna comes under suspicion, and Sophie, determined to clear her friend’s name and armed with skills earned under the tutelage of her powerful ancestor Alice, turns detective. In spite of some clichéd, Dan Brown–influenced business with the top-secret Prodigium hunters L’Occhio di Dio, the snappy one-liners, loyal friendships and burgeoning romance will delight fans of Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Maggie Quinn series. (Fantasy. YA)
