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 Half Bad has arrived on the market with so much hype and so many critics are absolutely in love with this book. Half Bad has been called "the next Harry Potter and Hunger Games", in addition it's being marketed as a book for fans of Markus Zusak and Patrick Ness. In addition, Half Bad was optioned by Karen Rosenfelt, the acclaimed producer of Twilight, Percy Jackson and The Book Thief. Considering Half Bad is "the next big thing", I can't help but feel disappointed and I truly don't understand why this book has received so much praise. 
 Half Bad is a slow-moving novel that never really takes off and the writing isn't as strong as I had hoped. When an author is compared to J.K. Rowling, readers expect magical, beautiful prose, but the writing in Half Bad is far from magical. The beginning of Half Bad starts off strong with strong, deep prose with meaningful, thought-provoking sentences. The quality of writing is extremely inconsistent and the later sections of the book are filled with simple, poorly structured sentences. The 2nd half of the book is filled with sections where Green does a lot of telling and not enough showing; do I really need pages and pages where Nathan just says what he did? "I thought I heard something outside. Nothing there...It's raining. Drizzle. I'd better check outside again. I'm heading back to the woods. I think they are watching me. I can feel it sometimes. My skin crawls with it." The beginning was full of such deep, powerful sentences and the fact that the rest of the book was filled with run-on, repetitive action sentences irritated me. The writing needed major polishing and I didn't enjoy reading Sally Green's prose throughout Half Bad. 
 Half Bad is mostly told in 1st person, but a few sections of this novel are written in the 2nd person which was an interesting tactic. Most novels are usually written in the 1st or 3rd person and so, reading something in the 2nd person tense was a nice surprise. Though I did enjoy the use of 2nd person narration, I didn't really understand the literary significance of it. I understand that Green wants readers to put themselves in Nathan's place, but the 2nd person didn't feel personal at all and it wasn't poignant enough to make me feel any emotions. 
 When the writing went downhill, the plot also slowly started to fall apart and there are sections of Half Bad where there is no momentum. There are entire sections where nothing happens at all and it became so tedious just waiting for something exciting to happen. Nathan's quest isn't gripping at all and is only a small percentage of the entire book. So much time is devoted to showing Nathan trapped in a cage and the plot really reaches a stalemate from that moment on. Towards the end, I expected something exciting and intense to happen, but the characters just continue to lounge around and get nothing accomplished. The books ends on a cliffhanger, but I just don't know if I even want to continue this series at all. While the cliffhanger was intriguing, it just didn't warrant the ridiculously slow-pace and lack of significant plot events. 
 The romance in Half Bad is just plain bad and the romance is never fleshed out properly. Nathan and Annalise fall in love instantaneously and their romance is extremely basic. Annalise's character development was seriously lacking and I didn't understand how Nathan was foolish enough to fall in love with her. Green makes it extremely obvious that Annalise is bad news, Nathan even thinks that a few times and yet, he disregards his judgement and common sense. Annalise's character arc was full of holes and Green never made her an appealing character that I would root for. 
 I had extremely high expectations for Half Bad and I really wish I had enjoyed it more. I didn't expect to be so utterly disappointed by Half Bad and I doubt I'd even consider reading the sequel anymore. Half Bad was slightly entertaining, but it was bogged down by a unnaturally slow plot and an ineffective writing style. I'm clearly the black sheep when it comes to Half Bad considering it's received widespread acclaim.