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Cover of Half City

Half City

by Kate Golden

🌶️🌶️🌶️moderate·spoiler·Harker Academy #1

Why Read This?

You'll get an addictive, tension-filled read with satisfying romantic payoff and edge-of-your-seat action.

Synopsis

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?

At a Glance

4.20 ★ Goodreads
Spice Level🌶️🌶️🌶️moderate
Endingspoiler
PairingM/F
Romance Pacingslow burn

Top Tropes

blood feud romancedark academia romancementor/student dynamics

Mood

darkmysteriousintenseromanticsuspenseful

Book Details

Goodreads Rating

4.20 ★

Published

2026

Primary Genre

Romantasy

Pairing

M/F

POV

First Person

Romance Pacing

Slow Burn

Cliffhanger

spoiler

Audiobook

Available

Yes

Format

Standard

Narrator

Unknown Narrator

Narrator Count

Single

Tropes

RomanceMagicActionAngstWorld
Theme Constellation

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Mood & Vibe

Mood

sign in to see writing style, pacing & more

Characters

FMC: hunter sign in to unlock

Spice Details 🌶️

intense / passionate sign in to unlock

deathgraphic violencekidnappingmurdertraumaviolencebloodcaptivitydubious consentstalking

World & Setting

urban fantasy sign in to unlock

Reading Context

tension finally satisfied sign in to unlock

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