When a faculty member dies under suspicious circumstances at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages, authorities rule that it was an accident.

Kirkus Reviews considered it to be "a poignant and bittersweet family tragedy disguised as a mystery", albeit with "thin worldbuilding".

[1] Publishers Weekly called it a "wonderfully quirky mystery filled with inviting characters and gripping surprise twists", but noted that Ivy was "petty, petulant (and) hard to like".

[5] Locus described it as "a story about the lines between truth and lies and about the legacy of bitterness", in which Ivy is a "compelling narrator" whose "voice (...) carries the action well", despite "some of the twists (being) too well telegraphed.

Club was less positive, particularly faulting the portrayals of students Dylan and Alexandria as lacking "the development needed to make them feel like anything more than moving pieces of the plot", and comparing Ivy's interactions with faculty member Rahul to a "rom-com plot" that is "almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the story", ultimately concluding that despite being a "lovely look at sibling rivalry", the book "feels so close to being magical, but never finds a way to achieve its full power".