Secret Mage

Reggie Lang is seventeen, and suffice it to say, she has a lot going on. She has a mother who has problematic alcohol use and mental health problems. In addition to this she has virtually had to bring herself up, and also look after her mother, acting as parent rather than a child, oh and I forgot to mention that her father went missing when she was a child. That would be enough for any broad shoulders, but there is more. She is being targeted at school and to top it all she has been experiencing inexplicable random acts of bringing dead animals back to life.

Obviously these random lazarus acts do have a perfectly logical explanation in that she is some kind of magical being (well, you did know there was something didn???t you?). Yep, she is magic and she gets frequent visits from this bloke who she describes as a cliche, and by the way he visits her in her dreams.

Welcome to Reggie???s world as she finds out about herself, her father and another world. You see through the course of the story, Reggie finds out that she comes from another reality called The Other, in which magic is a realty.

Secret mage is a pretty decent slice of portal fantasy, aimed at thirteen to eighteen year olds. Although, with the themes in the book, it would probably be aimed at the higher end of this age range as the book does deal with some more mature themes.

Rebecca Jaycoxs???s Secret Mage tugged at my attention from the start. Mainly due to the main character of the story, Reggie. She is equal parts snark and good heartedness and she is immediately engaging.

I have to admit, this is the first book that I have read by Rebecca Jaycox and I am quite glad that I got the chance to read this book, as normally I would have missed this.

The main characters in the story are vivd and relatable,?? with the standouts being Reggie and Brwyn, the changeling elf. A number of different characters are introduced throughout the book including the main love interest Asher and the big bad Andrius Drake.

Unfortunately, I didn???t particularly gel with both Asher and Andrius to be honest. It wasn???t that they were bad characters, it???s just that they didn???t capture me wholeheartedly in this book. I didn't feel that there was much development in their personality,?? although I think there may be more of them both as the trilogy progresses and it will be interesting to see how they develop later in the series.

However, I am willing to forgive these things that did not work for me in the story because Reggie is enough to carry the story by herself, as is Brwyn, who is duplicitous in his actions, but is intrinsically a good guy who is aiding the revolutionaries in the tale and is trying to aid the rebellion in his own way.


Throughout the book, Rebecca Jaycox manages to keep the plot moving at quite a bouncy pace. There are times when there are lulls in the plot, but that did not prompt any disengagement of my attention, again mainly due to the characters.

I enjoyed my visit to The Other. In fact I enjoyed this bit immensely, and Rebecca Jaycox builds a solid and believable world that she shows you through the eyes of the character, which is my favorite method of world building rather than massive info dumps.

The magic system is pretty comprehensible and again, rather than giving a mass of information about how the magic system works, we get to see it in action and discover its uses and limitations.

However, the strongest aspect of the book has definitely got to Rebecca Jaycox???s witing, She manages to pitch the tone just right and keeps you engaged in the plot. There are some times when my attention wavered, mainly when the romance enters into the story, but that is my problem, not the books.

What particularly impressed me was that Rebecca Jaycox does not shy away from pretty hefty subjects, such as mental health, problematic alcohol use, child carers and sex. Whilst there are scenes of a sexual nature, Rebecca Jaycox does not hide the fact that the characters have a sexual relationship and instead of portraying it as a bad thing, she presents it as a natural part of life, but remember to do it safely. And she deals with these other hefty subjects skillfully and with a light touch, highlighting how much of an effect that they have on an individual.

As a final note, it has to be mentioned that this book is a reissue and Rebecca Jaycox originally released this book as The Other Inheritance. However it has been revamped and a fantastic new cover by Molly Phipps added,?? which is quite stunning and fits the tone of the book perfectly.

So , if you like your heroes to be part snarkiness, part good hearted with a dose of magic, then you cannot go far wrong with the Secret Mage.

NB: My thanks got to the publishers and Zoe for a pretty stunning copy of the book, which didn't affect my judgement at all.