Review: By Midnight - Mia James

April Dunne is not impressed. She's had to move from Edinburgh to Highgate, London, with her parents. She's left her friends - and her entire life - behind. She has to start at a new school and, worst of all, now she's stuck in a creepy old dump of a house which doesn't even have proper mobile phone reception. Ravenwood, her new school, is a prestigious academy for gifted (financially or academically) students - and the only place her parents could find her a place, in the middle of term, in the middle of London, on incredibly short notice. So she's stuck with the super-rich, and the super-smart, and trying to fit in is when the rest of the students seem to be more glamorous, smarter, or more talented than she is, is more than tough. It's intimidating and isolating, even when she finds a friend in the conspiracy-theorist Caro Jackson - and perhaps finds something more than friendship in the gorgeous, mysterious Gabriel Swift. But there's more going on at Ravenwood than meets the eye. Practical jokes on new students are normal, but when Gabriel saves her from  something in the Highgate Cemetery, and then she discovers that a murder took place, just yards away from where she had been standing, April has to wonder if something more sinister is going on and whether or not she's going to live through it .

My thoughts:

This book is a paranormal YA romance with mystery thrown in. April Dunne is the heroine who has move and go to a new school. Filled with rich kids and smart ones. Perhaps it could have been like a normal school if the in crowd had not paid so much attention to her, and murders happened in the neighbourhood.

April was smart kid, she questioned things, but of course she was also a girl and young. Which means crush time. There are some hotties around, but she is more interested in Gabriel who act all mysteriously. And of course I knew what he would turn out to be, even if it takes a real long time for the truth to come out. As for Gabriel, he was very sweet and protective.

This book has its doomed romance between April and Gabriel, but mostly it's about all the other things going on. Strange things are going on, her dad is also investigating the school and cemetery and he is on to something. I am just gonna go out and say it since you get it already in the prologue, vampires. But the truth to what on earth is going on takes its fair time, and then at the end, of course that is when it gets really thrilling. One part of the mystery I can't mention, but it's shocking.

There was one other thing that I sort of guessed, I was right, just not entirely about what it meant, and it was one good secret. And again, you just have to read to see.

Conclusion.

I think this one would be good for the YA crowd. It has got romance, mystery, vampires, secrets and more secrets. It will keep you guessing.

Rating:

Ok

Cover:

It does look nice

Reason for reading: 

Sounded good

Info:

Series: Ravenwood 1

Genre: Paranormal, YA, romance, mystery

Pages: 448

Publisher: Gollancz, Feb 10th 2011 (hardback 2010)