Half City by Kate Golden (Feb 17, 2026) Thank you, @acebookspub and @prhaudio for the gifted advanced listening copy! #prhaudioinfluencer
On the surface, Viv Abbot looks like a 21yo struggling to get by on a low salary in an expensive city, living with her best friend, dating a guy she can’t decide if she really likes. Oh, and she’s a demon hunter. She started hunting deviants in secret with her father at a young age but since his murder a decade ago, she’s been hunting alone – keeping the secret from her mom, sister, and friends. Then she gets invited to enroll at a school she never knew existed – the Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she goes, she’ll have the opportunity to gain hunting expertise and meet other hunters. But Viv has a secret – she’s a rare kind of hunter and her truth must stay hidden. But then dark things start happening at Harker Academy and Viv will have to do the last thing she wants to do, trust people, in order to solve the mystery, potentially unravel the truth behind her father’s death, and protect those who remain at the academy.
Wowza this was an absolutely addictive dark academia fantasy. I absolutely inhaled it and I cannot wait for the next in the series. Viv is a fantastic lead character and her Harker & non-Harker friendships are fantastic, particularly as the story progresses. It feels like a lot of this book was setting up what comes next, but in a wildly entertaining and propulsive narrative that left me dying to know what happens with the cliffhangers.
🎧 Audiobook Thoughts: (16h 35m) Taylor Harvey and Teddy Hamilton narrate, but to be clear, Harvey does 99.9999% of the narration. I’m really intrigued by the addition of Hamilton to voice a character that isn’t in very many scenes, which makes me believe that character will play a unique role in the future of the series!
Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🎧 Audio performance: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🔥 Spice: 1.5 🌶️
Book Smart Kate 