I received a copy of this book at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Stop me if you've heard this before: An orphan who's parents died in a magical calamity goes to a magic school, quickly makes enemies with an arrogant blonde and discovers a number of secrets have between withheld for many years. Actually, don't stop me, keep reading - because as familiar as that may sound, it's where any similarity between this story of new students attending a magic school and the rather well known other such story ends.

In "Trials of Magic" we meet two orphaned sisters who are trying to get into the Hundred Halls, the only magic university in the world. Finally living on their own after years bouncing through foster homes, they're short on money - and one sister is short a sponsor for the Hall she wants enter - and have to pass the entrance exams to get in. But these girls are determined to get in, even if it might mean taking dangerous risks to do so.

This is a really great book and a good start for a series. The characters are complex and while the girls do tend to run headlong into dangerous situations, they are capable of learning from their mistakes and show a lot of growth through the course of the story. The writing is clear and the author does a good job of making it easy to keep track of who's who so that I didn't have to keep looking back at what I'd already read to figure it out (something I run into far too often!) It's definitely a series I plan to continue reading.