The Vengeful Half

The Vengeful Half focuses on Olivia Winter, an atypical teenage girl with a slightly overprotective mother, who escaped from a parallel world called The Hidden Lands. After Olivia's mother is kidnapped for her skills as a potion-maker, Olivia is thrusted into the world which her mother sacrificed everything to protect her from, which leads her on a whirlwind journey of self-discovery.

I loved the characterisation of every single character in The Vengeful Half. I enjoyed that we got to see the switch in Olivia being both determined and scared, and how realistic is felt for her to go between the two when she unearthed new information about herself and the ones closest to her. I love the strong character we got to see in both Thessia and Adelise, although I wish we got to see more of both of them. The subtle language change between the races (Miralems, Daramons and Fanarlem) was also appreciated, and allows us a better sense of the history of each of these races, and helps gives the characters we see more of an identity. I hope for The Stolen Heart (The Hidden Lands #2) we get to see more of Lester (as well as Thessia – she is definitely my favourite character), and then we will have three main characters for each of the three races.

The illustrations were whimsical and a nice touch. Sometimes however, the drawings highlighted the fun and little things about a chapter (which is playful and enjoyable, don't get me wrong) when they could have focused more on the heavier dialogue or topics being touched upon.

The chapters also seemed incredibly short to me, sometimes unnaturally so (The Vengeful Half is 300 pages long with 53 chapters – the shortest chapter being a single page). Whilst there definitely was a call for a break where each chapter ended, it didn't necessarily have to mean the end of the chapter, however this is totally the author's choice.

I enjoyed the explanations of the timeline of the writing of the book, however these felt slightly out of place, as they were placed at what seemed like random intervals in the book. It was interesting to get the author's insight and a bit of backstory to these characters, but I may have changed the placement of them.

Whilst there were what I would consider multiple arcs in this story (i.e. waves of Olivia gaining different knowledge about her past), sometimes the pacing seemed a little off with this. I understand that this was to lead up to a big ending, and to establish characters in the start and middle of the book, but I would have liked to see a little more action during the middle. I also felt that the last chapter was a little anti-climactic compared to the chapters before it, yet it was also nice to see Olivia end the book with a small piece of happiness.

This is absolutely by no means a bad book, and I did sincerely enjoy it. I just think that some things could have been improved upon. With the second installment planned for the summer, some of these things might change, and I am looking forward to see where exactly the story is going to go next. I absolutely love the world that Jocelyn Dolamore has created and I would urge any fan of YA books to read this as it is truly a spectacular idea with loveable characters.

One of the main things I love is that whilst this book definitely has fantasy elements, it definitely boils down to a tale about both identity and family, which is something every reader, especially teen readers, will be able to relate to.

I really hope The Hidden Lands takes off and becomes a huge franchise because both the work and Jocelyn Dolamore truly deserve it.