Review: Half Bad by Sally Green

Title: Half Bad
Author: Sally Green
Series: Half Life Trilogy #1
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Release Date: March 04, 2014
Source: Purchased
Find it Here: Amazon, Goodreads

Half Bad by Sally Green is a breathtaking debut novel about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches.

You can't read, can't write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.

You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.

You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.

You've been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.

All you've got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday.

Easy.

My Thoughts: 

Half Bad is already one of the most interesting books I've read this year! I loved almost everything about it. The story itself was very good and very well executed, it has a male POV and the world building was quite excellent. It also has that very rare quality of introducing a character that I hate right off the bat but I somehow end up liking them.

I want to talk about the story of Half Bad first because it’s actually pretty good. Nathan is born of a white witch (mother) and a black witch (father) and it’s basically a story of nature versus nurture. Nathan grows up under the constant watchful eye of the counsel of white witches because they’re convinces that no matter how he is raised that he is going to turn out to be a black witch on his 17th birthday (when children become full witches). I loved that most of the story was about Nathan growing up and seeing the way he was treated just because of the way that he was born. Are the white witches turning him into a black witch by treating him differently and ostracizing him? And another thing, are the black witches only bad and trying to kill white witches because the counsel of white send hunters to kill black witches? These are all very fascinating plot and talking points going on within Half Bad.

Another reason why I loved Half Bad is because the whole book is from a male POV. I strongly believe that the YA genre is too saturated with the female perspective which after a while can make a lot of YA books feel the same. So anytime a YA book comes out that is told from a male POV I’m usually first in line to read it!

I also loved the characters in Half Bad. If you’re going into this book, just know that almost everyone hates Nathan! So the characters are very extreme. Most of his family members love him and don’t care that he’s half black and half white but most of the white witch community hates him. And then there was the woman who guarded Nathan whom I hated right off the bad but then she really grew on me!

Even though Half Bad could be slow at times, there was a lot of really great action. After just the first book, I’m really rooting for Nathan to become the witch that he is destined to be. And I really hope he kills a few particular white witches. I really recommend Half Bad to those who really enjoy witchy, magical type books!