Unexpected Enlightenment, and The Raven, the Elf

The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin and The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel by L. Jagi Lamplighter are the first two books of a series. The rest haven’t been published yet. They’re aimed at youth--the Harry Potter market, if you like. Instead of a boy you have a girl, instead of a well-defined enemy with many allies you have unknown enemies with possibly very extensive backing, and there are hints (so far) at mysteries behind mysteries. The adults she expects to be allies prove singularly uninterested and useless, even friends can be sometimes geas-ed--can she have been wrong in trusting her father? Chaos erupts in the wizarding school.

So far so good. The characters have nice balances of strengths and weaknesses.

I found Rachel’s confusion about her love life to be off-putting, but the rest was interesting enough to carry the story. If you liked the Harry Potter books (I did, but am unlikely to ever re-read them) and can put up with occasional “do I love him or not” passages, you'll probably like this too.