This is definitely one of the best books I've ever read. I loved the characters and the storyline. It took me right back to the beginning age of the young adult genre - think Harry Potter but with more diversity (and a much better author).
Malik's story was so heartbreaking but I loved watching him care about his adoptive brother. I loved watching him learn to trust other people

but the betrayals at the end devastated me so much. I'll be surprised if this boy trusts anyone ever again with everything that happened.

I thought the world building was great. I was able to keep up with it pretty easily. The only small thing that I noticed was that I wasn't sure how much actual time passed through the whole book. It said it was a summer school situation so I would guess the most would be like three months but I feel like he learned a lot of magic in that time frame. Maybe too much for that time frame? I also kind of wish we got more scenes of him actually learning the magic or at least how to control it since that was his biggest issue throughout the first half. But this didn't bother me too much while reading, it's just something I thought of afterwards. 
Finally, I have to talk about the audiobook format here because it is absolutely phenomenal. The voice actor is perfect. He puts so much emotion into the dialogue and even does ad lib sounds sometimes and his accents were perfect. But the audiobook also had background sounds! I think this is the first audiobook I've listened to that had anything like that. There would be different sounds for different kinds of magic and I think there was even thunder sounds during the couple stormy scenes. I loved it so much. Definitely recommend this format if you can. 
All around, this was a fantastic book and I can't wait for the second one to come out.