Amari's brother, Quinton disappeared after he started working for a mysterious secret agency after graduating from college. Since his disappearance, Amari has had trouble controlling her temper at the private school where she attends as a scholarship student. Then Amari gets a mysterious invitation to go to the same "leadership summer camp" her brother attended when he was her age. Both Amari and her mother are excited about this new opportunity, and Amari hopes at the camp she will discover more about her brother's disappearance. When she arrives at camp, she discovers that her brother had been part of a Bureau of Magic that moderates the interaction between magical beings and humans and that the summer camp is a training camp for future Bureau agents. She also discovers the same kind of prejudice that she experienced at school. As she looks for clues about her brother's disappearance, she has to fight hard to stay in the program while other students and teachers try to drive her away.
The temptation to write about a magic school is just too good to pass up for many middle grade authors. That being said, this was a better than average magic school book. The magic system is interesting, and the author does a good job with both plot and characterization. I admit I wasn't sure who the bad guy was until the very end. I put the second book on hold right away. (2021, 416 p)
P.S. I was amused that the author used his initials. Usually, a woman author uses her initials instead of her given name for a middle grade novel when the main character of her book is male. The assumption is that some boys won't read a book with a female author. The opposite happened here. The author is male but has a female main character. It is less common, and it made me smile.
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