Book Review: The Magnolia League

TITLE: The Magnolia League
Book 1 in a new series
AUTHOR: Katie Crouch
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: witches, urban fantasy, mystery
PREMISE: Alex goes to live with her grandmother in the south and learns that she is the heir to a powerful society embroiled in deep magic.
MY REVIEW: I'm somewhat embarressed to admit it, but I really liked this a lot. Why am I embarressed you ask? Because while I liked it, the novel is cheesy. Like almost every YA trope you can think of is in here cheesy. Also it stereotypes a lot. But to the author's credit for every southern/hippie stereotype that was in there she threw in a character who went against the stereotype. Also Alex was a rather frusterating main character who constantly flip-flopped all over the place and once again, it had a boring stock romance that was predictable.
But for all its cheesyness and slightly frusterats something intrigues me about this series. The dynamics between Alex, Hayes, and Madison were interesting too me for one. There's also a somewhat interesting plot here involving magic and there's very interesting world building going on. Writing is also decent but considering the author has written adult books before this I'm not surprised about that. This book just had a lot of stuff in it that tends to make me happy (such as Dex and Madison who are by far the best parts about this thing).
There are definite twists at the end I wasn't expecting and it makes me eager to read the next book. So a fantastic series? No. It's very generic in terms of YA. But it is a entertaining book and not horrible. There's definitely a lot to like here and keep you hooked.
RATING: Four out of Five white gloves for a decent read.