"Half Bad" by Sally Green

Harry Potter meets Divergent in this new trilogy that has all the kids abuzz.  Essentially, a half-breed witch is hunted by the "good guys" as he tries to track down his bad guy father.  I found it a bit hard to get into, despite the high page-turning quotient.  The writing here isn't as much a flow as it is staccato.   Mostly written as a first person narrative, it switches into second person twice -- once at the beginning and once as it progresses from the past to the present.  Because it is only those two times, it took a while to figure out what was going on.  It turns out, in this case, that the second person voice isn't about a super-narrator, rather, our protagonist is giving himself some "self-talk" to try to separate himself from the physical abuse he suffers.  Other than the jumpy beginning, I enjoyed the story, which does get graphically violent as it goes along.  This trend is likely to be magnified in the second book, indicated by a teaser at the end.  An interesting note is Sally Green's subtle (or not so subtle) subtext.  She has points to make about modern British society, and makes them well.  There are undertones about the inequities between whites and blacks, religious intolerance, even a swipe at technology, and how it numbs us to the world around us.  A worthy addition to the semi-dystopic literature that is all the rage these days.  The second book, "Half Wild," is out, with a third coming.