Arcane Mysteries (Magic Guardian Academy, #1)

This is book one of the Magic Guardian Academy series and the main character is young and untrained witch Zoey, who attends a normal high school. After catching the school bully beating up a guy, she intervenes, but as usual her magic goes haywire and the fire spell she unleashed on him, continues burning far longer than it should have. She races away and gets pulled into an empty classroom by a guy she has never seen. His name is Reed and he is a wizard. She worries that he will tell on her, but he disappears almost as quickly as he came. She skips the rest of the school name and rushes home to see her mother. When she arrives, she finds this Reed fella there and her mother packing a case for her! It seems he has come to take her to a magic school for her safety and for that of her mother. Zoey thinks they can just move again, but soon realises that she has to leave. She is taken out to a car which has another two young wizards onboard, Jasper and Kento, who seem to all be friends.

When she arrives at the Magic Guardian Academy, the home of the Arcane, she is told by Headmistress Olsen that she will start testing in the morning, as to whether she can even stay at the school. No clues are given and she begins to worry about what this might mean. She knows if someone goes bad or hurts another, they can have their magic striped off of them, and she doesn’t want to face that future. She may not have exactly been trained much by her mother and her father died about five years ago, so she has problems controlling her magic on a good day. There are others after her for her magic, dark mages who are after her powers and her strong magic, however uncontrollable it is. The first test seems rather outlandish and totally out of her league, but the other students have been learning how to do these sorts of spells since they were five, she knows nothing about spells at all!

Matters go out of control during this test, as the usual spells don’t seem to be working against the creature they are to banish, and students are being injured. Then it is her turn to try and the dark magic creature tries to entice her to join their side of the fight, whispering ideas to her. Anything she tries seems to only feed the power of the creature and others try to stop her. That is until something deep within her bursts forth and the creature is gone. The next day she is given some mentors, who turn out to be the three young men who picked her up from her home. The first one takes her to the place of the first test, which should now be a safe location, to get her to focus and use her magic to simply light a match. When she finally manages, of course, something else goes wrong and another student is badly burnt. The only way to heal her is for her and Zoey to be forever bound together!

Not exactly the way Zoey thought her future and learning of magic would turn out. Her three companions or guards, mentors or whatever she should call them, are now to watch her 24/7, but a bad feeling about her mother makes her break the rules and go home. It seems someone or something is coming for her and her mother is in danger as well as her. Dark mages are appearing in the school and trying to get her to join them and there is something inside of her, which feels tempted when she feels her magic responding. If she allows this side of her to overtake her, then she will be lost and will definitely lose her place in the academy, as well as her three hunky companions, who she is getting growing feelings about. A question has to be asked as to why she has not been taught any magic and why her parents tried to hide her away, always moving.

A nice start to the series, but one that doesn’t give many answers to Zoey’s questions about magic and why it was hidden from her for so long. She has gone from being in a human high school where she spent her time trying to avoid others and keeping her magic under wraps, to a new school, where other students laugh at her lack of magical knowledge and her magic continues to go haywire whenever she uses it, causing many others to fear her! Not the greatest of starts in a new location, but at least she has three good looking guys always at her side, even if she doesn’t want them there! She has many challenges to face and may have lots of questions, but she will have to survive first, in order to get anything solved. An interesting character, chucked into a whole new world, with a good bit of magic, spells and romance. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Arcane Studies.