Halfway Dead Review

This is my review for Halfway Dead, which was originally posted on my old blog and I just thought that it was high time that I posted it here.

Title: Halfway Dead
Author: Terry Maggert
Series: Halfway Witchy #1
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: 30 June 2015
Format: Ebook + Paperback
Pages: 264
Source: Sent by the Author
Rating: 4 stars
Reading Timeline: 09 June-11 June 2016

Goodreads Synopsis:

"Come for the waffles, stay for the magic”

Carlie McEwan loves many things. 

She loved being a witchy. She loves her town of Halfway, NY-- a tourist destination nestled on the shores of an Adirondack lake. Carlie loves her enormous familiar, Gus, who is twenty-five pounds of judgmental Maine Coon cat, and she positively worships her Grandmother, a witchy of incredible power and wisdom. Carlie spends her days cooking at the finest- and the only- real diner in town, and her life is a balance between magic and the mundane, just as she likes it.

When a blonde stranger sits at the diner counter and calls her by name, that balance is gone. Major Pickford ask Carlie to lead him into the deepest shadows of the forest to find a mythical circle of chestnut trees, thought lost forever to mankind. There are ghost in the forest, and one of them cries out to Carlie across the years--

Come find me

Like the forest shadows, danger can run deep. The threat is real, but Carlie's magic is born of a pure spirit. Witch the help of Gus, and Gran, and a rugged cop who really does want to save the world, she's fight to bring a ghost hime, and deliver justice to a murderer who hides in the cool, mysterious green of a forest gone mad with magic

Book Review:

 I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from the author. When I read the premise of the book I realized that I hadn’t read a good witchy book in a while. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get back into one of my favourite YA genres. Besides, the catch phrase is what actually sold me on the idea of the book. I mean who doesn't like waffles and magic?

Halfway Dead is an extremely easy book to get through. One moment I was on the page one and the next I was hallway through the book, waiting on the edge of my seat to see what was going to happen next. The flow of this book was just epic. The length of the chapters varied from short to long and it just made me read the book way faster than I had intended. Everything just seemed to happen at the right moment and never felt forced or inappropriate.

I really enjoyed the fact that Carlie already knew that she was a witch, it just made the book way better for me. I didn’t have to wait for her to discover what she could do and which side of the good vs. evil spectrum she would choose. Carlie’s humor is definitely one of the things that made me love the book way more and it made me just continue reading. Her humor worked really well with the atmosphere throughout the book. It worked in every scene in the book and never felt like she was pushing it. I felt as though the sequence of events was well planned and made understanding and the enjoyment of the book a lot easier. I like to think that each event allowed time for an explanation if it was ever needed. The events were well spread out that it didn’t feel like nothing was happening or too much was happening. The book had a perfect balance of everything I rather enjoyed in a book.

Oh my gosh. Okay, Carlie was absolutely amazing. She was by far one of my most liked protagonists of the year. She was chatty and she was constantly present to everything at hand. She was realistic in the sense that sometimes she was a little scatter brained but that just added to her character. She just really made this book completely enjoyable and made me want to read on and on. She was extremely likable and she had such a great positive vibe that just made my reading experience a lot of fun. She was quite caring and protective of her community. She was so outdoorsy and full of adventure. She’s the type of girl who looks like she can’t even hurt a fly but she is actually one hell of a women who could kickass if she needs to.

Gus the cat, was just amazing. He stole the spotlight whenever he was present in the scene. He was super adorable and had the same characteristics as my cats. Carlie’s gran was super supportive of her decisions and she added a great dimension to the novel. She had a lot of great advice and provided that wisdom aspect that just helped to guide Carlie.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. It was a really great and sassy read. One of my favorites of the year. All the characters were well rounded and the plot held me captive until the last period on the page.

Yours in Reading,
Melleny