Book Review: School Spirits

TITLE: School Spirits
Book 1 in the School Spirits Hex Hall series spin-off
AUTHOR: Rachel Hawkins
PUBLISHED: May
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal
PREMISE: Izzy Brannick gets sent to a honest to goodness regular high school to get rid of a ghost. It turns out to be more then she bargained for.
MY REVIEW: Spin-offs are tricky beasts. Sometimes they're pointless and you wind up not feeling anything for the new characters. In other words, it was an idea that sounded better on paper. But sometimes they can be just as wonderful as the series it originated from and I'm happy to say this series is of the second kind.
It does everything that you should do with spin-offs: make the character their own character. Izzy is not Sophie 2.0 and that's a GOOD thing people (I've seen a few complaints about this and I honestly scratch my head at it. Of course Izzy is not going to be like Sophie, she's a different person with a different background and a different situation. If you weren't going to like a book that wasn't narrated by Sophie then why did you bother?). We get some more insight to the world outside of the one Sophie lives in. We get new characters who just as enjoyable as the old ones (Dex, Romy, and Anderson are freaking AWESOME) and it's got Hawkin's usual brand of humor and fast-pace fun plots.
Frankly, I'm satisfied. This is everything I hoped for. Bring on the next book please.
WHO SHOULD READ: Hex Hall fans (willing to give Izzy a chance and not rail at her for not being Sophie), Percy Jackson fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five sarcastic mirrors