Half City by Kate Golden – Review

Published: February 17, 2026

Publisher: Ace

Series: Harker Academy #1

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 494 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Welcome to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. Keep your daggers sharp, and your wits even sharper.

Viv Abbot is an average twenty-one-year-old girl. She lives in an expensive city where the rent is too high, works long hours at a thankless job, and is dating a guy she doesn’t even like in the hopes of winning her prickly mother’s approval.

She just also happens to be a demon hunter.

Ever since her father’s murder, she’s been forced to hunt deviants alone, meaning everyone, including her family, sees her as an outsider. . . . Until the day she crosses paths with a dangerously alluring demon, Reid Graveheart. The reformed deviant tells her of a school for people just like her: Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she enrolls, she’ll learn to hone her craft, work with other hunters, and never be alone again.

But Viv has a deadly secret. One that not even her new friends at Harker can know about. Not when the school might hold the answers to untangling the mystery surrounding Viv’s father’s death. When strange occurrences begin to plague the students, Viv will have to figure out who she can trust, and fast. All while trying to ace her classes, not fall for a demon, and make it through her first year at Harker in one piece. How hard could that be?

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I’ve been on a dark academia kick for the last year or so, so obviously I was very excited for Half City. The setting is cool, the classes sound interesting though not too much time is spent there, and the characters are a hot mess, but in a fun way. This book very much reminded me of the Shadowhunters world by Cassandra Clare with adult characters and less lore.

Half City follows Viv Abbot, a demon hunter whose abilities manifested a decade ago rather than at the usual age of 21. She’s been solo-ing supernatural beasties of all species – vampires, werewolves, demons and more – but when she encounters a demon that invites her to Harker Academy rather than trying to kill her, she reluctantly accepts. Harker is a school that trains hunters and Viv is excited to be around others of her own kind, though she hopes she’ll be able to uncover information about her father’s murder many years before. Much to her surprise, the demon who invited her is an instructor there. Reid Gravehart turned his back on demon-kind and despite their initial bad vibes, Reid and Viv are drawn to one another. I mean, it is a romantasy after all!

In many ways this is a straightforward romantasy, which is not a bad thing. I enjoy the enemies-to-lovers aspect and Reid and Viv definitely start out as enemies. Viv tries to kill him on multiple occasions and brashly calls him out in front of her peers. Viv also has a good group of friends both at Harker and her closest friend, Penny, from her mundane life she maintains. She’s also got a boatload of family drama and so many secrets and lies about her dual lives that it honestly gets a bit stressful! Despite Viv trying to find out what happened to her dad and, later, two of her classmates, there’s not actually that much of an investigative or mystery component to this story, which was a little disappointing to me. You know I love my mystery-fantasy genre blenders.

Overall, I thought this was a really fun story with an interesting world and compelling characters. Half City is the urban monster hunter book I didn’t know I wanted and truthfully, while I did enjoy the romance plot, I would have been even happier without it. I would have loved for this book to focus more on the academics, friendships, and Viv’s double life in the first installment with perhaps more of a slow burn romantic subplot. But hey, I knew what I was getting into and either way, I’ll probably check out the sequel because it was fun and absolutely packed with action.