I first read this book to kill time in hospital and was really surprised to find it was deliciously entertaining, the plot centres around sixteen year old Zoey Montgomery/ Heffer/ Redbird (Montgomery is her dads name, Heffer is her stepdads name and Redbird is the name she chose when she was marked) who just wants to fit in at school because home is hopeless (her stepdads a controling overly religious guy, her moms weak willed and does whatever he says, her sister is to quote Zoey "a barbie clone" and her brother is a "troll") Any hope of Zoey fitting in at her old school is gone when she is Marked by a vampyre tracker (which means she has become a fledgling and in the next four years will either become a vampyre or die) and must move into a boarding school known as the House of Night where she discovers she has special powers (known as affinities.) The book starts off being kinda typical teen girl stuff but gets really hard to put down after a while and once you read deeper into the series you really start to care about the characters. Its well written in the aspect that it lays down a good foundation for the next two books (after that a lot of the stuff in this one just gets shoved into the background) and subtly makes you feel the characters emotions in a way that makes you feel theyre real people insted of paper and ink. I would recommend this book to anyone as it helps you understand yourself more than anything, you look at the problems they face and in the back of your mind youre thinking what you would do to solve them. And to any guys thats thinking of reading this, once you get past the first few chapters its not such a girl book anymore.