Gabriella Poole

I didn't hate this book - I just really didn't like it. At least it was short and I read it quickly.

Cassie is very poor, but very intelligent - we can guess, because she won this prestigeous scholarship, although her behaviour and choices do not seem very intelligent. She goes to Paris, to study at Darke Academy, she meets two fascinating boys, a friendly roommate and a group of enemies - nothing new here, except maybe The Few, because I still don't know for sure what kind of creatures they show more are.

Generally, I think this book was rather boring and I'm definitely not going to read the rest of this series. show less

My thoughts on this book can be summed up in three words: I don't care.

I don't care that Cassie is possessed by Estelle. I don't care that Jake is on some mission to find out what happened to his sister. I don't care that Cassie has extraordinary powers. I don't care about the Few, I don't care about Ranjit, I don't care about the school, all if it is pointless to me.

I have a real issue with boarding schools in books nowadays because there seems to be complete lack of rules. Students ditch show more class, no exams or assessment, there's nothing actually school-like about it. Cassie regularly ditches class to go shopping with Isabella with no punishment. Besides that, these kids seem to have the run of the school. They conform to their own rules and being in class happens so infrequently in the novel it makes me think the author's reminded herself she's set the story in a school so probably should have a school moment or two somewhere even though they attribute nothing to the plot at hand.

I originally went into this series liking Cassie, but that waned in book two as it seemed nothing she did was her fault. It's not her fault she feeds on Isabella, it's not her fault Estelle makes her almost kill people, everyone is quick to let her get away with everything and either blame themselves or a higher power for the problem.

I'm done with the series. Like I said, I don't care. And rule number one when writing fiction should be creating characters a reader cares about. show less

Borrowed this from the public library to satisfy my curiosity because it keeps popping up on my Amazon recommendations.
Most important thing to mention - IT'S NOT A VAMPIRE BOOK! I got the impression from looking at the cover and reading the piddly little blurb that this was gonna be another vamp book which is alright if it was good but the genre has really reached saturation point now so it does wear thin reading the same spiel over and over.
Thankfully this is *not* one of those books - show more Secret Lives is the first in (I think) a trilogy and written by an British author *hallelujah!* which is great IMO as I think there is not enough British Paranormal fiction out at the moment. The Main character Cassie is British and thank-the-stars she's not one of those horrendous stereotyped Posh thorough-bred Brits who talks like the Queen- she's from a rough area and has lived in a foster home for nearly 10 years. So when Cassie gets a scholarship for the highly exclusive Darke Academy it's her chance to turn her life around. She travels to Paris where the School is based for this term (oh didn't I say- the school moves to another city in another *country!* every term) and at first feels terribly out of place when surrounded by all the rich kids from around the world. Thankfully her roommate Isabella is not stuck-up and sneering like the Ice Queen Katerina and they become good friends.
However after a few weeks at the Darke Academy Cassie starts to notice some strange things going on which somehow are all related to the Elite group of students called the Few...
A very interesting and refreshingly different story that kept me wondering what the big bad secret was until the end and I'm very curious as to what'll happen in the next book when the Academy is relocating to New York. show less

Really quite enjoyed this! :) As a first novel of a series, it does well setting up what to expect in future volumes. I like the lead character, Cassie, she's a rough, snarky girl who isn't easily rattled. I'm coming off a string of reading YA books with a wimpish female lead, so to read a spunky one is refreshing!

Lots of stuff is kind of left up in the air, which I expect of a first novel, and I'm eager to get into the nuts and bolts of it all. This was very much a gloss over the story, the show more real stuff is (hopefully) still to come.

I will say I did not care for Ranjit's immediate admission to Cassie the first time he speaks to her that he can't handle his feelings for her. It came out of left field and made no sense. I do like that he's weird and strange, and there's no love triangle. At least, I hope it doesn't develop into one with Jake :S

All in all its a very PG take on the whole teen romance/supernatural boarding school thing. Not a lot of darkness, but its a fun and easy read. Very curious as to what exactly these "people" are, soul-suckers? Ordered book 2, awaiting its arrival. :) show less