This is a gentle Hogwarts-esque tale of witches in a magic school who are divided into houses and bonded into covens. They cast spells in Spanish (or using the Latin root words).
Twelve year old witchling Seven Salazar desperately wants to be put in a coven in House Hyacinth. Once the young witches are sorted into houses and covens, they bond for life and come into their full powers.
What she can’t imagine – won’t imagine -- is being put into house Spare. Those are the misfit witches, the witches who didn’t try hard enough in classes or are social outcasts. Or so popular opinion says.
When she’s sorted into a coven of three house Spare girls, she imagines her former BF and all the other witchlings laughing at her. Worse, she can’t bring herself to bind with the other two Spare girls – one’s her school bully, the other is a sort of social misfit new-girl – and knows she’ll never come into her full witch powers as a result. So, instead of letting the ceremony go through, she invokes the “impossible challenge.”
Which is swiftly delivered by adult witches overseeing the covens and houses: hunt and kill a Nightbeast before it wreaks havoc on the town.
Lucky for the girls, the bully’s a bit of a monster expert. Seven still doesn’t want to bond with her or the other girl, no matter what she knows.
The hunt begins with a spectacular failed attempt to lure an unseen Nightbeast out of its lair. Then the girls head to the library, to research Nightbeasts.
I won’t spoil any plot twists or how the girls complete the task and bond in their coven.
Readers who love witches, like Lee Edward Fodi’s Spell Sweeper and The Apprentice Witch series by James Nicol, will love this story!
