Book Review: Half City by Kate Golden
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Half City by Kate Golden
Published: February 17, 2026
Series: Harker Academy #1
Genres: Adult // Fantasy, Romance
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (Open Door)
Quick Thoughts: Half City pulled me out of a reading slump and ended up being one of my favorite reads in a while. The found family is a standout, Viv's character development felt real and earned, and the mystery/quest plot kept me hooked the whole way through. Just be warned: it ends on a cliffhanger with zero closure.
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Learn more about my rating & spice scales here.
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Blood/Violence
Death of parent
Grief
Murder
Kidnapping
Confinement (minor, side-character)
Drug use (mention, no on-page use)
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Found family
Academy settings
Mystery storylines
Hidden/Secret Identities
Demon/Hunter romance
Student/Teacher romance
What is Half City about?
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?
Half City Review
I put Half City off for a long time because urban fantasies are not my favorite and books with academy settings haven't been hitting for me lately. Needless to say, I'm quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this.
There are a couple of things I should mention right off the bat. First, I alternated between audiobook and eBook. Once the bulk of the worldbuilding is done in the beginning of the book, it's very easy to listen to. I can confidently recommend the audiobook, even if you struggle with following complex storylines through audio (like me).
The second thing is that although this takes place in a fantasy city, there are a lot of callbacks to the real world like movies, pop culture, Grindr, etc. The references aren't too plentiful, but they're present, so if that's the type of thing that pulls you out of stories, it's worth noting.
Found Family & Character Development
I have been craving a good found family and I think the one in this book stands out as a new favorite. Sophia, Peter, Elliot, and Penny were not just a friend group, but a group of people Viv felt at home with. I loved anytime they were on page together, and a lot of Viv's character development was tied to her finding her people for the first time. It was heartwarming in a really relatable way.
Speaking of Viv, some readers will find her a little hard to like, maybe even too self-pitying, but I saw this as a great starting point for her arc. Given all she's been through and how lonely she's felt as the only hunter of her type, her starting emotional state is believable. She periodically falls back into toxic thought patterns and self-sabotage, but overcoming trauma and self-hatred is rarely linear, and I appreciated how her growth was portrayed here.
Romance
I was enjoying the rest of the story so much that I found myself forgetting there was a romance subplot in the background. The story focusing more on plot and mystery gave the romance space to develop naturally. The spice and the connection between Viv and Reid felt earned. Also, it is a student-teacher/instructor relationship, which I tend to be wary of, but this one seemed relatively unproblematic, in my opinion.
Plot
The plot itself is a mystery/quest, which I tend to like. Though some of the twists are predictable, I did not see the ending coming and I have so many theories on where the story is going. But just a heads up, this does end on a cliffhanger with no closure on anything.
Definitely recommend if you like demon/hunter dynamics, urban fantasy, and training academy settings. I will be thinking about this book until the second one comes out this fall.
Check out this review on Goodreads or Storygraph.
Happy reading!
Kim
Half City FAQs
Some of the answers may be spoilers if you haven’t read it already. Proceed with caution!
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Yes! Half City is the first book in the Harker Academy series by Kate Golden. It's the first installment of a trilogy.
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It's a trilogy, so three books total. The second book is called Cursed City, and it's also expected in 2026. When does book 2 come out, you ask...
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Cursed City, the second book in the Harker Academy series, is scheduled for October 13, 2026.
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Yes, it absolutely does. There's no tidy resolution at the end.
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The spice level is 3 out of 5 🌶️ or open door. This means readers are present for the spice scene but euphemistic language is used to describe it.
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There is one spicy scene in Half City in chapter 45.