Miniviews #5: Half Bad and Alienated

Half Bad by Sally Green

Publication Date: March 4th, 2014

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 416

Series: Half Life Trilogy

Source: Purchased

Rating: 4/5

I was a little skeptical picking this one up. By the blurb I just thought it was going to a rip-off of Harry Potter. But all the hype and my love of witches made me want to read it right away anyhow. And man was I wrong. This book will definitely have a certain type of reader. The book starts in second person, which just threw me right off. Don't worry non-fans of second person it doesn't last long with only small sprinkles of it throughout the rest of the book. As for the content, the first glimpse you get of Nathan is in a cage. And well that sets the tone for the book. This book is brutal. Nathan is tortured, hated and controlled by the white witches council from birth just because his father is the most notorious evil black witch. It doesn't matter that Nathan has never even met him. It's that wonderful thinking from the "good guys" that they're just trying to prevent bad from happening. Nathan does grow up with some family members that believe in him. They continually tell him that not matter him being half and half he is good. And I loved the balance that Green gave to Nathan between love and hate. Nathan is understandably confused about his father. How is he supposed to hate somebody he's never met and that person being his father? Nathan has a lot of inner turmoil to work out. Green does give the reader Nathan's back story to help understand him, which I found crucial to my understanding on Nathan and his life. I'm definitely very intrigued as to where this story is going!

 

Alienated by Melissa Landers
Publication Date: February 4th, 2014
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Pages: 352
Series: Alienated
Source: Purchased
Rating: 4/5

Aliens, guys. Aliens! I will read mostly anything involving aliens. It's the trekkie in me. But Alienated also seemed super promising and fun. So I jumped right in. Quick premise; an alien race called the L'eihr's made contact with Earth a few years ago and to get on good terms they are sending a few on their top students to stay with an Earth family. And Cara gets picked. So we've got dual POV's going with Cara and Aelyx. I think having both those POV's is vital to the story. Earth is very wary of these aliens. So when Cara gets picked to foster one she is not excited. The only benefit she sees is the free ride to any university. Aelyx is also not happy about going to Earth. He thinks himself and race far superior(which they are in a way). But he and his friends have ulterior motives. I thought this was just going to be a super fun read. And it is a fun book, but it's also got quite a darker undertone. There are a lot of people on Earth that don't trust the L'eihr's. And we get first hand glimpses of this in Cara's town. She starts by losing all her friends, they don't want to be seen talking to her. It just progresses from there. The town forms this cult which leads to violence and hate towards Cara, her family and Aelyx. Landers shows the dark side and distrust of humans. Of course it wouldn't be YA if Cara and Aelyx's relationship didn't evolve into a romance. But there was no insta-love. There was a simmering attraction to go along with the unease when thrown into living together. The relationship progressed over months. I enjoyed both of them. Cara is a strong and intelligent girl. She stood up for her choices and what was right. She didn't let any of the town idiots scare her. Aelyx doesn't really get emotions, kind of like my beloved Data. And is very wary of humans and their actions that seem to be solely based on emotions. He also has a secret he's hiding from Cara. Which consumes a lot of his thoughts.
The only reason I couldn't give this book a perfect rating was the ending. Well almost the ending. It threw me a little. I knew something like it would go down. But the way it went down was kind of off from the flow of everything that happened before that point. Needless to say, I will be impatiently waiting the follow up. I'm very excited to see where the story goes.