Book Review: HALF BAD by Sally Green

Name: Half Bad
Author: Sally Green
UK publisher: Penguin
UK release date: OUT NOW
Summary: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.

Review: First off let me just say I LOVE the cover, and this one got me. With that being said perspective can be a great things when reading a book, and after reading Half Bad I feel like my anger may have actually been a deeper connection with the books and the events than I was giving it credit for at the time. The premise of this plot was what drew me in, and the subtlety of the magical world within a non-magical society was enough that I could let it grow in my mind with my own interpretations of magic. There is a limit though as to how much I can imagine myself, and I constantly felt I wasn't being given enough to connect with the situations, even when I understood them.

There was a bluntness to the writing because of the first person narrative which gave it pace and perspective, but at times this really let the story down, and this is a problem I often have with first person, so at time I was left going "..!" whilst reading, when something would happen or information would be given. In my world this means something along the lines of 'really, I'm just going to have to go with that am I'.  This isn't to say the whole book was like this, there were some really sweet moments and moments that tugged at the emotional strings! The first person also meant that at times I felt I wasn't getting proper character development with certain people, with who I felt there could have been great characterization. This culminated with me ending up not liking the main character by the end of the book.

I will give credit though for having an anti hero as a main character, someone who dabbles in the dark, and some of the issues his character raised I think allow for some great moral debates as the series continues, and because of that I do sort of want to continue reading.

So for me half bad was just that, half bad or maybe I should say Half Good...Let's Hope Half Wild, gets really wild and steps things up a notch. 

STEPHEN