Sarah Smith has lived all of her fourteen years as a servant to the magical Winter family along with her parents and sister. She's been the sickly one, taking a daily pill, which leaves her weak. But she starts skipping the pills and learns that she has magic when she levitates a vase her employer particularly treasures.

With her secret out, her mistress Mrs. Winters decides to make use of Saran, now renamed Cassandra Reed, by sending her to the exclusive Miss Castwell's School for the Magical Instruction of Young Ladies.

Cassandra has a lot of trouble there. She's behind on her magical education; she attracts the attention of a group of mean girls. Then she opens a previously sealed magical book and becomes the focus of a lot of attention she'd rather avoid. She's also afraid that her real background will be discovered.

But Cassandra makes some friends and even attracts a boy or two and life gets good. Until the revenants start arriving.

This was a fun coming of age story with both magic and adventure. It is also the first book of a trilogy. I listened to the audiobook of this one and enjoyed the narration. ( )

I bought this one night under the influence of sleeping medication, along with a slew of other Molly Harper titles, one of the rare examples of doing something under the influence that you don't regret the next morning.

Saying that, I didn't realise it was a YA novel until I started listening to it. I'd probably still have bought it, because Molly Harper, but there was a radical shift in expectations in the first 30 seconds.

This is an alternative England, in a world where people with magic took over the world, suppressing technology because they believed non-magical people would destroy the planet. Non-magical people, called snipes, are now the serving classes in a society that feels like a dystopian version of feudalism and an oligarchy. Magic families beget magical offspring, snipes beget ... more servants. Except Sarah's parents. She's a snipe and it turns out she has oodles of magic her parents have been trying to suppress so she isn't hauled off. Of course she's found out and this is the story of what happens after.

This is a sweet story, about magic and the power of friendship. It's also filled with snark, thank goodness, because sweet is generally not my thing. Reading it as an adult, there are small nit-pics I could make about the story logic, but they aren't generally the kind of thing pre-teens would notice. At least, pre-teen me wouldn't have. Pre-teen me would have been more enthralled with this book than adult-me was, and adult-me was sitting in my car on the street in front of my house for 15 minutes after work so I could keep on listening. That's a rarity for me, but Molly Harper just knows how to create a story book world that's easy for me to get caught up in, whether it's a YA or and Adult one.

Amanda Ronconi narrates this, as she does all of Harper's other books, but if I hadn't seen the credit on the cover, I'd not have believed it. The characters are English (and I think Sarah's/Cassandra's family is Irish?), and while my tin ear cannot say with any accuracy that she nailed the accents, she totally sold it to my ears - she sounded completely different; I only heard hints of anything recognisable when she was delivering the snarky lines.

Overall, an enjoyable story and entertaining audio. ( )

Surprisingly strong! I'll have to read more in this series. ( )

Changeling by Molly Harper
1st book in the Sorcery and Society series. YA magic. Historical with a touch of steampunk.
Society is divided between the magic users as upper class and those without magic as the servant class. 14 year old Sarah has been sickly as long as she can remember until one day she saves a vase using magic. The family she works for forces Sarah into impersonating as a distant relative and she finds herself in a magic school she is ill-prepared for. Magic familiars, competitive classmates and a book that can’t be read are all part of the strange new world for Sarah.

Engaging and enthralling, I was hooked listening to the audio.
Now that Sarah, aka Cassandra has magic, she needs to figure out who she is inside. Nice? Snarky? A follower? Turns out she doesn’t want to be influenced by who can make her important.
Growing pains.
I really enjoyed this “coming of age” troupe paranormal and will read the second as soon as possible. ( )

A light and fun story very similar to Harry Potter. ( )