Vampyre with a Y?

That's pretty much what I thought when I started reading this book. It was like when I started reading the Sweep series and learned they spelled "magic" with a "k" so it was "magick". Funny thing, the English language.
Marked by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast is a vampyre book. And yes, it has a Y. I I can get over it, you can too. It starts off with a teenage girl named Zoey walking down the hallway of her school and realizing there's an undead vampyre standing by her locker. Weird beginning, especially with all the connotations of vampires we have thanks to Twilight and Dracula, right? Especially because we expect that vampyres keep absolute secrecy in all cultures. But WRONG. Vampyres are easy to identify by the marks on their forehead in this world, and that's what happens:
You get Marked. Basically a Tracker vampire (NOT JAMES) comes when you're a teenager and marks you. Then you're left with the condition known as vampyrism, which means you start turning into a vampyre or your body rejects the change and you die. So there's a chance you could go either way, which is kind of scary.
One way to better your odds, though, is to go to the House of Night school, of which there are many worldwide. This is what Zoey does, because she really has nowhere else to go; her parents pretty much tossed her out and although her Cherokee grandmother is ultrasupportive she feels she belongs at the House of Night.
But foul things are happening there, especially Zoey discovers Aphrodite, your typical bully/popular girl has it out for her. Zoey gets sucked into this cultlike thing called the Dark Daughters and finds out she has strong, unheard-of-for-a-kid-vampyre powers tied to all five elements: earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit. She's also seeing ghosts and extremely addicted to human blood, which shouldn't be happening because that symptom comes later in the process of the Change.
So Zoey is special. Nothing too hard to deal with, right?
There were also a lot of similarities between this and one of my other favorite series, Harry Potter. Look at this...

House of Night=Hogwarts. Kids that develop a special difference that sets them apart from others go here to develop that difference and embrace it.
Zoey=Harry Potter. She has incredible powers that are unheard of, just like how Harry surviving that death curse was unheard of, huh?
Zoey's parents=Dursleys. They throw her out because she's a vampyre now; how much more Dursleyish could you get?
Nala the cat=Hedwig. She attaches herself to Zoey, like when Hedwig and Harry form that special bond.
Aphrodite=Draco Malfoy. She's even got the pale blonde hair, along with the evil.

But unlike some instances when similarities to another series make a book worse, this just made them better. And it's a completely different take on vampyrism which I totally love. In conclusion, the House of Night series is pretty much a Harry Potter story written on Twilight characters by a Meg Cabot-type author. In short, everything I love about reading in general. I haven't found a good series like this in a long time, and despite all the similarities I have found, it is still VERY original and should be another vampyre favorite sooner or later. ♠♠♠♠♠