“Wanted by no one.
Hunted by everyone.
Sixteen-year-old Nathan lives in a cage: beaten, shackled, trained to kill. In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most terrifying and violent witch, Marcus. Nathan’s only hope for survival is to escape his captors, track down Marcus, and receive the three gifts that will bring him into his own magical powers—before it’s too late. But how can Nathan find his father when there is no one safe to trust, not even family, not even the girl he loves?”
Trigger Warning: Abuse, Kidnapping, & Self Harm
I picked Half Bad up randomly when I went to the library. I had been hearing stuff for a while that this book was so good. Unfortunately, I can’t say that’s true.
The beginning of the book starts off with the middle of the story, then backtracks to how his life was. There are skips and bounds because if we saw every little detail of Nathan’s life, there’d be multiple books for sure. We see enough of Nathan’s life to know that his life was total shit. Abused for years by his older sister with her sick and twisted games, ostracized because of his heritage, and loved by only a few people, it’s safe to say that Nathan’s life is total shit.
I found myself reading this book slower than I usually read books. I normally whizz through books when I put my mind to it, especially if I find a story interesting. And while I did find Half Bad to be a tad interesting, I didn’t find that this book had the usual oomph to it. I mean, I’ve read reviews where this book is praised like it’s the next god. I however, found Half Bad to be exactly that. It’s not half bad, but its not half good, either. I found this book to be okay.
The writing in this book is slow paced, and while yes, there are spaces in time in the story, I found the writing to be okay. Because of all the jumping in the story, I found the flow of the book to be extremely choppy. And at some points I even found the writing and story to be almost diary-like. Nathan will tell us what he did for the day, and then he’ll go to sleep. And then the next paragraph — the story will continue on with how the last week had gone by. What he did, who he saw, or what he was even thinking about.
Compared to what people had said, and have been saying about Half Bad since it’s publication, I found Half Bad to fall so far below the expectations of what I had envisioned. I don’t know is I’ll be reading the second book, Half Wild, but if I do, I’m going to keep my expectations low so I won’t be disappointed. And truthfully, I don’t even know how Half Bad fell through my expectations because I honestly went into this book not knowing what this book was about, or knowing what would happen. Maybe Half Bad is just one of the books that fell through my fingers.
Thank you for reading my review on Half Bad by Sally Green! If you’d like to check out Half Bad for yourself, you may do so by clicking the cover above!
Cheers,
Adele
Adele Is Reading 
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