I was drawn into the story right from the beginning of the book. I love anything with magic, so this was a perfect fit. I grew up reading the Harry Potter books so this was definitely of interest to me. One thing that I enjoyed was how the characters would use magic for practical, everyday uses. In the Harry Potter books it seemed like they used magic in more extreme cases, but this book was like a regular world that just happened to include magic. But, one thing that was kind of a turn off was how the main character would make bad decisions. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine when characters continually make bad choices. But overall, I really liked this book and would recommend it to anyone who is looking to read something contemporary but with fantasy elements, too.