Audiobook is fun, only wish it was longer. ( )

This second book in the series continues with Sarah Smith/Cassandra Reed's adventures as she continues her education at a school for magic and tries to find her role in life. She wants to find and help other changelings like herself. She has heard that there might be an enclave in the Scottish mountains where some changelings can be found.

When she is invited to spend the summer with her friend Alicia in Scotland, they all think it would be a great time to search for changelings. However, Mrs. McCray isn't very welcoming to the girl her son Gavin has taken a fancy to. She wants to keep Gavin all to herself.

The girls do manage to elude their very persistent chaperon and discover where the changelings are being held, but that doesn't mean they have a plan to rescue them or any idea what to do with them once they have freed them.

Also, Mr. Crenshaw is still determined to wrest the Mother Book from Sarah's hands and place it with a more worthy candidate. So the girls aren't surprised to discover that Mr. Crenshaw is behind this school for changelings. He has plans for them. But someone has their own plans for Mr. Crenshaw and an old enemy makes a reappearance.

This was an engaging story filled with magical devices and magical spells. It is also a coming of age story and a great story of friendship. ( )

While this is book 2 in a series and I haven't read book 1 (and I would like to for the record!) a lot of background details for the first book are filled in as you go in this story, enough that I got the gist of what had gone before.
Sarah is now Cassandra and in school, she's trying to mostly fit in but there are some issues with the world she finds herself in, rumours of people similar to her who are being used by the magical elite of this world to gain more power. Cassie mostly wants to survive, but she also finds herself with friends who know her secret and care for her and want her to succeed. She has to deal with the innate snobbery of the society she lives in and the stress of being the holder of the Mother Book.

I really liked Cassie and her friends and while sometimes things seemed to move quite quickly it was a good read overall. There were times when the worldbuilding felt a little flimsy but overall a good read. ( )

Engaging YA fantasy with just the right mix of fun, fear and friendship


"Fledgling" is the second book in Molly Harper's new YA fantasy series "Sorcery and Society", set in an alternate Victorian England, ruled over by magical families calling themselves the Guardians, who have turned humans (called snipes) into surfs, bonded to a Guardian master.



The story continues on immediately after the climactic end to Changeling. I was pleased to see that, while it kept the same feel-good tone as the first book, it soon broke free from the confines of Miss Castwell’s Institute for the Magical Instruction of Young Ladies, where most of the action in "Changeling" took place. This opened up more of the magical and political world and provided new challenges for Sarah Smith, our young snipe-with-magical-powers-pretending-to-be-a-Guardian-Lady heroine, Sarah Smith.



Molly Harper manages to produce a story that is an uplifting blend of fun, fear and friendship. The teenage girls in the story face some difficult challenges but that doesn't stop them from having fun and behaving like... well, teenage girls, albeit ones with Victorian restrictions on their freedom.


One of the strengths of the book is how well the friendship between Sarah and her two closest friends is described. The banter works and the mix of personalities creates a believable dynamic where the girls encourage and support each other and each brings something different to the story.


The plot has enough tension in it to keep me turning the pages but never falls far into darkness. It has a few surprises and it promises a satisfying story arc for the next few books.


I also liked the fact that the adults that Sarah has most contact with aren't just ciphers. Sometimes, in YA stories, adults appear like the maid in Tom and Jerry cartoons: they swing partly into view but don't really take part. Sarah's parents and the Guardian couple who are sheltering her all make a contribution to Sarah's development and continue to be developed as real characters.


I found "Fledgling" entertaining and engaging and I'm looking forward to the next one.
( )

Fledgling is Molly Harper's second foray into the young adult world. Her first novel in the series, Changeling, introduced readers to Cassandra Smith and her world of the magical haves and the nonmagical have-nots. We see Cassandra's struggles to adapt to her new magic-wielding world through her time at Ms. Castwell's finishing school. This time around, readers get to see a little more of her world as she and her friends travel to Scotland on summer holiday, all while attempting to save changeling children like Cassandra herself.

I was not quite as enamored by this new world of Ms. Harper's as I was the first time. The story is perfectly fine, and the characters are as adorable as ever. The only difference is that I read the first novel and listened to the second.

Now, I adore Amanda Ronconi. I think she is a stellar narrator, and I believe she does a decent job narrating Fledgling. For the story, she must adopt a myriad of English dialects and accents, including Scottish, Irish, private-school educated, and the wide range in between, and I can tell the difference in all of them. They may not be 100 percent accurate, but in my opinion, they are believable accents. I think my hangup is that Ms. Ronconi is just not English, and I missed her Kentucky/southern drawl I normally hear her use when narrating anything by Ms. Harper. So my lack of excitement from listening to this particular novel has less to do with the story or the performance and more my own hangups about how the narrator normally performs.

Fledgling is silly and, yes, somewhat predictable. The characters' actions are slightly outlandish and unbelievable, but then again, we are talking about a story wherein a young woman born into the servant class suddenly finds herself with magical powers and is adopted by the very same family she was serving to pass as their magical, high-born niece. This young woman then goes on to save the day at her boarding school and now in Scotland. So, having the characters do some unbelievable things is rather a moot point. The story does take a more serious turn towards the end, one I welcome. For that reason, I look forward to seeing how Ms. Harper plans to finish the series. I probably won't be listening to it though. ( )