She’s a phoenix who can’t make fire, which, in her family, is basically a capital offense.
- Series: Richmond Academy, Book 1 of 5
- Author: W.M. Dawson
- Genre: YA fantasy, magic school
- 🌶️ Spice: 0.5, kissing only
- Kindle Unlimited: yes
About the book
Shipped off to a school full of students with gifts that could level buildings, Shayla Montgomery has one semester to prove she belongs. Turns out she does. Just not the way anyone expected.
At Richmond Academy of Magic, failure has a deadline. If Shayla can’t unlock her abilities before her eighteenth birthday, she faces the Rite of Forced Ascension — a transformation designed to wipe her memories clean and hand her family a blank-slate daughter they can actually control. No pressure.
But Richmond isn’t what her family sold her. It’s dangerous, yes — full of students carrying gifts they’re still learning not to break — and it’s the first place Shayla has ever felt like she might actually belong. Because the secret her family spent generations burying? She isn’t a failed phoenix. She’s something rarer. Something they were afraid of.
Then her father shows up to finish what he started. Shayla has to choose: the version of herself her family designed, or the one she’s been quietly becoming — the one Georgios, a hybrid shifter who has seen her clearly from the start, already believes in. And for a girl who’s spent her whole life being told she’s not enough, being truly seen might be the most dangerous thing of all.
You’ll love this if you like
Magic school · underestimated heroine · hidden powers · slow burn · found family · a controlling family she has to outgrow
What readers are saying
★★★★★ “As she moves through time there, she finds friends, enemies, and an interesting school that changes as its mood changes. This is an interesting story that I recommend.”
Darkwing Duck, Amazon review
Content notes
Emotionally controlling parent · threat of forced memory erasure · peril and violence · mild language · YA. See all content notes.
Keep reading
Shayla’s story continues in Trial by Sea, Trial by Earth, and Trial by Wind, all out now and in Kindle Unlimited. The finale, Trial by Spirit, arrives December 15, 2026.
