Allie Sheridan has just been arrested for the third time in a year. She hates her school and her parents don't know what to do with her. No-one can fill the hole left when her brother ran away. As a last resort, her parents make the decision to send her away to Cimmeria Academy, a boarding school Allie has never heard of and who's location is a mystery. Instead of hating it, Allie starts to make friends, improve her grades and really starts to feel at home. That is until someone gets murdered. Then Allie starts to realise that there is a huge secret at Cimmeria, a secret that is shared by the teachers and even some of the pupils. A secret that Allie somehow gets caught up in...
So the first thing I thought when I looked at the cover and saw the title was "Oh not another vampire novel!" Thankfully I was completely wrong. There is not a single vampire in this book. Or a werewolf. Or an angel. Or anything else that would tie it to the dark/paranormal romance genre (even though that is what this cover strongly suggests). Hurray!
This is a novel filled with suspense and suspicion and will keep you guessing until the end (and into the next one!). And yes, Daugherty manages this without a single supernatural creature. She uses secrets, mystery and danger to reel the reader in and keep them hooked. Her writing style flows well and the pacing is good. She creates a convincing world and her characters are completely believable. I love Allie! She is complex, with her troubled past, but also genuine. She suffers from the same doubts as most girls, falls into the same traps and is completely likeable. Even though there is some romance involved, it doesn't overwhelm the book or become the focus of the plot, even if it does have the inevitable triangular element. The whole novel is well written and I struggled to put it down. I honestly cannot wait to read the next one (currently due for release in January 2013! Yay!) and I really hope that it will deliver all that it promises.
If you like Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon, you'll love Night School!
I give it 8/10!
Title: Night School
Author: C. J. Daugherty
Publisher: Atom
Teenage Fiction
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