Hex Hall (Hex Hall #1) by Rachel Hawkins

One of my new year’s resolution is to read more books but every month, I fail to read anything. A few weeks back I started reading Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins. It had an interesting plot and once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.

One way a fan described the book is it’s like Harry Potter and Mean Girls got married and had a kid. The school and the classes it offered is similar with Hogwarts in some ways, even some parts of the story reminded me of Chamber of Secrets. Spoilers ahead.

The story revolves around Sophie and finding the truth about her origin. Her powers are nothing like any ordinary witch, whether white or dark. She grew with a normal mother who separated with her father when she found out that he was a warlock. While in Hecate Hall, Sophie finds out that her absentee father is the head of the Council, and some of the students do not like her because of it.

On her first day, she meets the gorgeous Archer Cross, who made fun of her magic skills when she failed to cast a spell on a wolf who was about to attack her. Sophie develops a crush on him but turns out he’s dating Elodie, a witch who dislikes her. Fate seems to bring them closer to each other like she was paired with him in Defense class, and when Sophie was sent to cellar duty [detention] for the whole semester, Archer “defended her honor” and got sent there as well. They became close after a while, and Sophie considered themselves to be good friends.

Sophie’s roommate Jenna is the first and only vampire that was allowed to attend Hecate Hall. Jenna was accused of killing Holly, her former roommate and former girlfriend of Archer, and was also accused when Chaston and Anna were attacked. But Sophie was convinced that she had nothing to do with it and was being framed. This was part of the mystery of the story.

Elodie, Chaston, and Anna are the mean girls of the story. They are the only dark witches in school and are in a coven. They have been trying to recruit Sophie to be part of it since she’s listed as another dark witch. Apparently, the coven needs a fourth member for a spell they’re trying to do, and Holly used to be their fourth. It was rumored that their coven is trying to summon a demon, hence needing four members for the spell to work. Of course, they denied the rumors.

Mrs. Casnoff is the head of the school. At first, she reminded me of Dumbledore, she knew the secrets about Sophie’s father’s side of the family.

The book is easy to read, quick to finish, although it took me more or less 5 days to finish it. While in the middle of reading, I didn’t jump into conclusions unlike how I usually am with other stories. I just waited for things to happen and didn’t burden myself with guessing who’s behind the attacks or what will happen in the end.