Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is an odd book, in that the main character gets tortured (not much described, but enough to know it was real torture with lots of death around her), loses her memory in the process, and then after a few pages with a flashback or two, with no memory return, she is off to the magic university to start swooning over a pretty boy and having trouble with the mean girl. Sure people try to kill her now and then, but for someone that was recently tortured and has no memory, she more or less dives right into the stereotypical "going to magic school trying to fit in" thing. She thinks about the boy a lot more than she worries about who she might have been before she lost her memory or the people that keep trying to kill her. In short, I found her character unbelievable, and it felt like the serious themes were largely ignored in favor of the YA stuff. I found the plot a little lazy and loose, like the author didnt think much about whether things really made sense. For example, when people keep trying to kill the girl, the decision is somehow made by the magic school that the girl should play the hunted prey in a training exercise. You know, get over yourself girl, so what if you were tortured and people keep trying to kill you, its just an exercise, why dont you view it as empowering? Another example, even though she was tortured not to long ago, and even though people are trying to kill her with alarming regularity, she rejects having a bodyguard because she wants to "live her life" -- despite the fact that she cant remember "her life" and hasnt remotely forged a new one. The writing is reasonably paced and engaging, and the good reviews could be legitimate. However, while I did not find this to be a terrible YA fantasy, I didnt find it particularly good either. P.S. For a YA fantasy done at a more sophisticated level, I recommend Psion Beta, which has around 150 5 star reviews on Amazon. Just as in this book, there is a good measure of teen boy + girl stuff in Psion Beta, but its wrapped in a much more involved and tightly written adventure story.