Half Bad by Sally Green is a breath-taking 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.
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[There's these two kids, boys, sitting close together, squished in by the big arms of an old chair]***
(Penguin, 3 March 2014, ebook, 413 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a book you have owned for at least a year but haven't read, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I bought this book (in fact, I have the whole trilogy) ages ago and never got round to reading it until now. I have no idea why I waited so long. If Half Bad is anything to go by, I missed a treat. There's so much to enjoy here. I loved the fact the book is written in the first person. I love this narrative POV as it lets you get very close to the characters. It works perfect here and made this book a pleasure to read. There's a lot of mystery here and so much is left unanswered. I hope certain questions are answered across the rest of the books. Why do people fear Black Witch's so much? Why was he locked in a cage? This book fairly rattles along and I feel like I raced through it. I thought Half Bad was a cracking read and look forward to finding out what happens next.