Sometimes I wanted to strangle the characters
The story itself is great, so much promise... the book though... The writing is fairly bad, even for a young adult book. The characters are obnoxious and inaccurate depictions of high school kids. The dialog is often unbelievable. The timeline is ridiculous. There is a reason that Harry Potter spanned several years and the Twilight series nearly 2 (or 3?). It's hard to believe that THAT much horrible, unbelievable, crazy stuff happens in a month (I'm speaking to the whole series, not just this book). Also, most young adult books try to avoid dropping the eff word and being overly explicit with sex scenes. While, as an adult, I was a little disappointed when the Edward and Bella's scene got glossed over -- I would have been suprised if it had been presented as it is in this series. If you're a parent who is uptight about those sorts of things, skip over this series and find another.

Overall... an OK series. I wouldn't read it again, but I'm upset that I'll never get that time back either.

Name Meanings
Just wanted people to know that Neferet means Evil and it probaly has something to do with the second book "Betrayed"

Terrible Rip-off
This book is horrible. The characters are annoying and the writing style is sub par. Elements of Harry Potter, Twilight, and Wicked are very apparent throughout the entire book. There were many times that I had to put the book down in utter frustration from the obvious rip offs. This is very unoriginal and an obvious ploy to make money off of the young adult fiction crowd. I only finished the book to see if it got better, which it didn't. The vulgar language was completely unnecessary, as well as most of the parenthetical statements. Pop culture references make the story even more cheesy. I cannot even believe this book got published.

a review
I really enjoyed this book. I finished it in one sitting. It is very well written, but for YA adult kind of explicit. I loved the Twilight series and picked this series up to kind of find something new to read instead of reading the twilight saga over and over. :) I plan on picking up book 2 tonight.

NOT FOR TEENS
This book should not be listed under juvenile/teen listing. The sexual references were completely unecessary for the story line and actually put me off in reading it. I loved the message of the book but the sexual inuendo and reference was completely out of place and distracted from the story. My husband bought the book for my almost 13 year old because it was on the shelf next to the Twilight series. I read it after her and was horrified by what she had read without my knowing so I have to go into damage repair mode. I am by no means a prude - I love Nora Roberts and others - but this CRAP is completely not needed for teens and pre-teens today; they get bombarded enough without having it in books marketed for their age range. I'm extremely disappointed in the Mother/Daughter team that put this together and will have CAST on my list of never buy and never recommend. Too bad!