Title: Half City
Series: Harker Academy #1
Author: Kate Golden
Publisher: Ace
Release Date: February 17, 2026
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?
Since her father’s murder, Viv Abbot has been hunting deviants alone for over a decade in the streets of Astera. Then, at twenty-one, she learns she can join the Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. She is told about the school by a reformed deviant named Reid Graveheart.
Viv’s first instinct is to kill Reid, but as the weeks of defense training with him go by and she sees him in action, she begins to see a different side of him. Yes, he has taken many souls in his life, but at least he is now helping hunters become better at killing the truly evil ones.
When one of her classmates goes missing, Viv begins investigating with the help of her new friends. They are told that the girl quit school overnight, but that doesn’t add up—she loved being there. Was she taken for nefarious purposes, and if so, what is the endgame? Viv doesn’t know who is behind the strange things happening at the academy, but she knows it can’t be good.
A strong first installment with a solid plot, interesting world-building, and engaging characters. The ending leaves you with so many questions about what is really happening. I really liked the secondary characters—Elliot, Sophie, and Penny all stand out as trustworthy and memorable.
There’s also romance in the air. There’s the tension between Viv and Reid, but I’m also intrigued by the owner of the club. I wonder if something will come of that.
The second book is coming out in October, and I'm excited to read it.
Cliffhanger: No
4/5 Fangs
A complimentary copy was provided by Ace via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
