Bad Magic (The Bad Books Book 1) by Pseudonymous Bosch

Summary: This book is somewhat of a continuation of the Secret Series by the same author. However, it centers around Max-Ernest's (from the aforementioned series) little brother rather than Cass and Max-Ernest. Clay is a big graffiti fan, but he only likes to draw it in his journal and on his room walls. He isn't interested in vandalism, but when he wakes up one day to find his graffiti art of the words "MAGIC SUCKS!" on the school walls (he has some residual anger against his brother, who used to put on magic shows with him, but abandoned the family after high school), not put there by him, he's shocked! Everybody thinks it actually is him, including his English teacher, who was empathetic to him when writing a report about the Shakespeare play The Tempest. Even his parents don't believe him and send him to a mysterious summer camp as a punishment.
SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON!

He takes a dubious plane to the camp, called Earth Ranch, and the plane drops him in the ocean on what seems like an abandoned island with a large package. He meets a llama, supposedly his guide to the camp, named Como C. Llama, and has to feed him carrot tops to get to the ranch. While the camp director's tent is strange, disappearing and reappearing randomly, the camp mostly seems normal (minus what seems like a ghost in the library)... until the campers go on a lava hike. Clay discovers that the entire camp is a real life reenactment of The Tempest, and nearly everything that happened was fake. A pyromaniac from another cabin starts to go try to burn down the library afterwards, and Clay has to beat him to the library to keep him from doing it. Clay has to walk across lava, but he makes it to the library. Inside, he finds not a fire, but a huge celebration for him, with his brother!

Plot: The plot is quite enjoyable until the part where everybody is a character from The Tempest. It made the book weird and hard to follow after that point, and that might be reflected in my summary. There were a couple good parts during the lava hike segment, but that section of the book was somewhat terrible. Plot score (40% of the final score): 7/10.

Characters: The characters are all very clear as soon as you get halfway through the book. Character development is visible and goes in a good direction. Character score (30% of the final score): 10/10.

Setting: Earth Ranch is vast and it was easy to visualize where everything was due to the author's use of imagery and characters often moving through the terrain. Even one-off areas were easy to visualize. Setting score (10% of the final score): 10/10.

Mood/style: Pseudonymous Bosch is really an amazing writer in this respect. The only writer whose style even comes close is Lemony Snicket. He keeps a light (or as he might put it, blase) mood in the book, even in more serious parts. His use of asterisks by sentences with little fun facts or jokes really adds to this. Mood/style score (20% of the final score): 10/10.

Overall score:

8.5/10

Please note that scores are rounded. 
Scores calculated using Ben Eggleston's grade calculator.