Review: Half Bad by Sally Green

Summary from Goodreads:
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.

This book had a dark and disturbing tone. Half Bad follows Nathan between the ages of 14 and 17. Nathan is the son of a White witch and a Black Witch, a half-code. Black Witches are the bad kind, the kind who murders and are dangerous. The Council monitors Nathan his whole life because his father is the most evil Black Witch in history. They attempt to use Nathan against his father. The world built was mildly interesting. The focus was mainly placed on the unclear divide between 'good' and 'bad'.

Nathan is subject to verbal, physical and psychological abuse throughout the book. It was painful to read about his life in this prejudiced society. We read about Nathan enduring gruesome pain and passing out every now and then. The plot was largely draggy. Nathan is on the run and finds himself hiding each day.

I didn't care about the characters we met along the way. The love-interest Annalise is the daughter of a White Witch who holds a high position in the Council. Their love was doomed but the lack of development between them failed to make me care. Many other characters were one-dimensional and weird (especially Rose who kept blushing and giggling for no reason).

I anticipated something shocking when Nathan's seventeenth birthday would come around because the book was leading up to this day. What happened was an exchanging of words in a span of 9 pages and Nathan being back on the run. Needless to say, I was very very disappointed!