The Book In The Attic

S POILER  W ARNING : Plot details follow.The Book In The Attic is the first book in the Celia's Journey series. In this book, Celia Fincastle discovers that she is old enough to attend Renasci Academy for Gifted Students, the top school in the Demesne, a place she has never heard of.

Synopsis
A mysterious book, unusual abilities, and a school that isn't quite what it seems - Celia Fincastle is about to step into a whole different world, and she has no idea what awaits her. She's got new friends and some big expectations for her future, but someone doesn't want her to stay. Celia must figure out who's behind the plot and stop it - fast - because there's more at stake than she realizes...

Plot
Celia Fincastle is living with Aunt Agatha, who is not a very kind person. Although she does try to cater to Celia's needs, she often fails, resulting in Celia's ultimate frustration.

However, on one boring night, Celia is told to go clean out the attic of Aunt Agatha's incredibly old house, and finds a book that seems to call to her. Later that night, Celia notices that the book is slightly glowing, causing her to open it to see what the source is. Soon enough, we are introduced to Higby Snodridge, a noticably serious, but funny, character. Celia is confusedly introduced to the concept of the Demesne. A few days/weeks later, Higby arrives at Aunt Agatha's house to bring Celia to the most prestigious magic school, Renasci. At the BUS station, she meets Maddie Hannagan. On the BUS, they talk about their lives before being sent to Renasci, and immediately click.

When coteries are announced, Celia finds out that she has equal propensity for all of them. Due to her connection with Maddie she chooses the one she's in, Mensaleon. This, while it was an inevitable choice brings about the problem of roomates. Doxa Gealefa is rude and dismissive of her, and refuses to see anything but her crafted narrative. She sets up a series of three pranks each of which she attempts to pin on Celia. The first is flowers that explode into purple confetti. The second in a host of purple bouncy balls that are everywhere. The third is dressing up the school mascots as lions. While none of these pranks manage to get her expelled, they are sucessful in framing her.

The attempts at framing only ramp up as rumors of Celia's perfect testing scores get conflated with a missing answer sheet. She is accussed of cheating, and very nearly gets expelled when soon after this she is found to have the same essasy as another student in multiple classes. It is only through a plot that involves writing two different essays that she manages to clear her name.

The culprit is turns out to be one of her student mentors, Neel Winokur,

Eventually, all problems are solved by Celia's clever thinking, and Celia is sent home without any worries, soon to return to another year of Renasci.

Trivia

 * Celia has a special credit card with the symbol of a ram on it
 * Celia makes friends named Kitt, Josh, and Heath, along with Maddie. (All though she hears of Audra, she doesn't meet her until the next book, where they quickly become friends as well)