Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Hunted is a book I've wanted since it came out but wasn't certain about due to my experience with the first novel in Meagan Spooner's solo trilogy before this. Fortunately, the dullness that permeated Skylark was long gone in Hunted and instead you're left with a beautiful...well...everything.



What I Liked

I was already aware of the fact Spooner could write beautifully. The Starbound trilogy is amazing and though I wasn't a fan of Skylark, I had to admit the use of language was beautiful. Whilst in Skylark it was a saving grace, in Hunted it's just one of many amazing things. Her use of language makes the book so easy to read and keeps you turning the pages.

Language isn't the only thing Spooner excels at in this book though and I found myself loving pretty much every character. Yeva was different to the original Beauty but she's very similar to what you generally expect to see of Beauty these days. She was a stubborn character, a hunter who wanted revenge for her Father's death who the Beast thought he could use. As usual, the Beast is actually a Prince but what changed him in this book is different than usual but it actually makes him a little more likeable. We all love the Beast because of the way he changes but the reason isn't the usual selfishness and that was in part because of the use of other Russian fairytales. I adore fairy tales from all cultures and am eager to read more. Before I read this I thought I'd never read "Tsarevich Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf" but turns out I did know the story! From where I don't know but it added a lot of interesting twists to this story. Aspects of this story relating to the Beast also reminded me
of the Norwegian fairy tale "East O Sun and West O Moon". The bit in particular I mean is when Yeva sees the sleeping beast and he appears human and that he didn't want her looking at him. The rest of the characters were great too from the sisters to even the Gaston like character, in the end, he was sweet and I just really enjoyed the characters and the relationships. Oh plus that two dogs were important characters, yeah, that was pretty great.

Finally, I love the cover. It's absolutely gorgeous, I mean, look up at it and tell me it doesn't tempt you. I dare you.

What I Didn't Like

Just like with Caraval there's very little that I disliked about this book. I do feel that considering that this book is a standalone, the ending was maybe a little too open. It's good to not get a skip to everything being great and typical but it was almost too open. Like, it makes it feel like you should be able to read more and you won't be able too.

The only other issue was some of Beast's pages were kind of pointless. I get that they're there to show what has happened to him but they were just an unnecessary break. And by this, I obviously only mean a few of the ones near the end. Throughout most of the book, they are great and interesting, you just don't need to see whar's basically a couple of blank pages to know what's going on with him.

Other than that, I truly did love everything and I'm so glad that I finally got the chance to read this book. I read it as part of a buddy read with a lovely gent called Gavin on GoodReads as part of a book group's challenge we both signed up for. I completely adored this book and it'll certainly be one I reread in the future!

5/5 Stars