Scion of the Sun Kindle Edition

maybe closer to 3.5 stars, actually.

The author's description says she writes "fun and flirty" romance novels for adults as well. I totally can see this.

It's a fun and flirty YA book with your average paranormal-trope heroine who goes to boarding school and discovers she has secret powers.

No vampires or werewolves here. Instead Holly Burton is the youngest female descendant (Scion) of a Celtic Sun God (he whom Beltane is named after).

She goes to a normal boarding school and makes friends with a hot guy...and no...wait...that's part of what was fuzzy for me. The school has classes in crystal-gazing and telekinesis, and at one point the principal is mentioned as having a motivation to help Holly so she can prove once and for all that biokinesis exists...but when Holly tells one of her classmates she can teleport he acts like she's a crazy head.

So how much magic is accepted by the "normal" kids was a bit hard to get a handle on. Meanwhile, Holly's teleporting back and forth between the fuzzy-normal boarding school and another world where her bonded warrior, (boy two in the YA love-triangle) waits for her in order to train her to find the mysterious Arwen and face down evil big baddie Cadifor.

Coolness on the mythology. Not so cool on the training scenes. Firstly, instead of finding aforementioned mysterious Arwen (which Holly reminds herself she has to do at the end of like every chapter) her new scooby gang (Sun Sorority) makes Holly answer questions like "what is our culture" and "explain the significance of Beltane." Don't even get me started on the crystal class back at the boarding school where we learn about different stones and their effects on the psyche.

The whole bonded warrior thing was fun as a love-tension thing, and even though the warrior can read Holly's mind and knows she likes him, he's all like "no, we must concentrate on getting the Arwen and beating Cadifor--no time for love." This kind of blatant faux-impediment usually ticks me off, but warrior-boy is so broody and moody and has a twist in his backstory that causes real troubles with Holly, so I forgave him.

There were also a few places in the prose where I had to stop and reread a few sentences because words were used in a way that didn't quite make sense to me. Wait, don't hate me for being a grammar Nazi. I'm not, usually, but there were a couple places the word choice just didn't quite make sense to me in the way I think the author wanted it to.

The scooby gang is explaining a whole bunch of confusing stuff to Holly and one of them says they "bamboozled" her (which I thought meant "to con")? And then there's the whole "Cadifor's consort" sprinkled throughout the book sometimes referring to Holly's estranged mother and sometimes to Cadifor's evil, male servant. I didn't get the feeling from the rest of the book that Cadifor was bisexual, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

The romance includes kissing and some hand-skimming of midriff, so elementary school safe.

One of the most fun things is the meta-references to other popular series that various characters make. Harry Potter gets at least two shout outs, Vampire Academy, and even RPatz (read the book to find out who that is if you don't know, you are obviously no lover of vampires if you don't know). And Holly's voice is quite fun when she gets a bit snarky ("The thing I like less than the Lord of Darkness? Blood")

So for a fun and flirty YA boarding-school of special powers with heroine torn between two hot guys flavored with Celtic mythology, this is your book. As long as you don't mind being bamboozled by some of the world building.

This Book's Snack Rating: Sour Cream and Onion Lay's for the cheesy romance with the bite of Celtic mythology in a snackable, but not sturdily built YA paranormal

A good story, epic battles, missing mother, grandma in coma, gifted school. A young girl learns the hard way she can astral project into another reality. When she gets back, she and her friends play pranks on a teacher. Then the young girl learns from another student she can use Crystal balls to jump her body to the other reality. It's was different. I think it ended to soon.

I loved loved loved this book. It had everything you love in a YA! Likeable characters, humor and hot boys! LOL! I love the references of all things awesome in books and movies, and I really loved Holly and of course Joss. I really can't wait for the second one!

I love me some some mythology. And this is druid mythology, which I have not had the opportunity to read anything about the druids. It was really interesting and it was different. Because it was so different, there is a lot of new information, but it never felt like an information dump. I thought Nicola Marsh wove the details and necessary information into the storyline very fluidly. I really liked the combination of action, humor, and romance that Scion of the Sun delivered. Really cool book, and looks like it is going to be an epic series!

Holly starts having "freaky" visions and promptly gets shipped off to a boarding school for <s>freaks like her</s>, ahem, gifted teens like her. I liked that people were split at this school. There were a lot of students there that didn't actually have any gifts or powers, but who were interested in learning about the new age subjects offered there. I think they just wanted to be able to learn to do something like the truly gifted. What was funny was that the people with the real gifts didn't always want them. People always want what they don't have, don't they? Holly wants to learn how to control her visions so she can stop having them and hopefully be out the school by summer.

But just on her first day, school gets even weirder for her. As soon as she visited the innerworld unintentionally, I knew I was going to love this book. It took an already interesting idea and then stepped it up a notch. And that was how the whole story was for me. It just kept getting more and more interesting. We are always finding out something new about the scion or the sorority, and then on top of it all Holly is so sarcastic. She really does not even know how to hold her tongue. I thought it would get her in more trouble when she first got to the school, but people seems almost impressed with her because of it. I liked that.

This is just the first book in the series, so I am not sure if there is going to be a love triangle or not. I love Joss, the connection that he had with Holly was great. I think it even surprised him at the beginning. Scion of the Sun is great. I kind of saw the ending coming, but that wasn't a bad thing at all. I am so anxious for the next book. Nicola Marsh's writing is so descriptive and she makes a story that is addictive to read. I couldn't put it down.

*disclaimer- I got a copy of the book for free in exchange for my honest review. I was not compensated for my thoughts.