Half Bad: Sally Green || Review

Half Bad (Half Bad Trilogy #1) by Sally Green

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?

{ Cover + Summary from Goodreads }

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I spent three days slugging through this book, and I actually managed to finish it. Somebody give me a prize.  “The trick is not to mind. Not to mind about it hurting.   Not to mind about anything.” Here's the thing-- I'm currently in the midst of final season, so like, 90% of January is just depression and tears. School is this constant looming thing in the background, so when I picked up a book that everybody else loves (more than their family members it seems tbh), I expected to have at least a moderately enjoyable retreat from life.  And I mean, it started out fairly well?? Witches in England and Wales? An antihero mc?? The tempting promise of a dark + eerie plot??? Sign me up.  But the writing rubbed me wrong from the beginning. It felt choppy to me, and there were passages of mind-numbing, unnecessary description that made my eyes glaze over. I stop caring about what clothes somebody is wearing after the second or third time of meeting them unless it's essential to the plot, and I reeeaaalllly don't need a thick paragraph devoted to just talking about the colors of the trees in the forest.  The plot also seemed completely lackluster to me. Majority of the time was spent viewing Nathan's background; which was interesting in the sense of how dark it was, but boring when considering 90% of the time was spent with him hiding out at home, or at some stupid council meeting. Had the book been more like the part with Nathan in the cage/the bit at the end with Mercury, I probably would've liked it a lot more. But then again, with the writing style?? Probably not.  Added to the fact that I couldn't connect with any of the characters (lord don't get me started on Annalise), and the glaring lack of any magic in the book at all, I was just really disenchanted with the whole thing. One of my family pointed out that I was cringing while reading and I can't exactly argue with that statement. Just because I disliked it, though, doesn't mean that you will-- and if you're interested by the blurb, I think you should definitely give it a shot!  I'm certainly the black sheep when it comes to this one.  *.5 out of 5 stars*

Nothing like kicking off posting reviews again by posting a negative one. xD

I'm currently at the end of my school semester and going through midterms (one left!!!) so I'm looking forward being able to get back into a schedule + post more. I've been reading a lot this month, and I've got some fun post ideas in mind. :)

I hope you're having a lovely morning/day/evening/night. ^-^ 

Let's chat! Have you read Half Bad? What did you think? Do you often feel like you're a reader with an "unpopular" opinion? TELL ME ALL THE THINGS.