HALF BAD by SALLY GREEN

Half Bad
by Sally Green
Pulished: 1st March 2014
Publisher: Penguin
Genre: Fantasy, YA
"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." - from Goodreads

Now, YA fantasy books are absolutely my favourite genre and so I was very excited when this book was released and was being compared to Harry Potter, which is my ultimate favourite series. So I obviously brought it on release day and was even lucky enough to find the last signed copy at my Waterstones. Although, due to my massive TBR pile I have left it until now to read this book, I honestly wish I hadn't bothered. 

This is the first book this year that I haven't finished, that's not to say I won't go back and finish it but only because I hate not finishing a book, especially when I have paid full price for a hardcover, but I certainly wont be going back to reading it because of the story. 

Nathan, the main protagonist, is constantly abused and belittled all because he is 'half white witch and half black witch', there is no explanation as to why everyone hates the black witches so much and no explanation as to why Nathan is literally kept in a cage. It was monotonous and boring and incredibly slow paced throughout and especially at the beginning the sentence structure was incredibly strange. I assume Green was trying to create suspense and drama by using short, clipped sentences but instead it failed and completely ruined the flow of the book. 

This is without a doubt the most disappointing book I have read so far and am incredibly annoyed I paid full price for it. Although in the interest of being fair I will not give this a star rating because I couldn't make it to the end.