Hunted
Author: Meagan Spooner
Published: March 14th 2017 by Harperteen
Genre: YA fiction, Fantasy, Retelling
Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. Though she grew up with the city’s highest aristocrats, far from her father’s old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering them. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?
-Goodreads
It's been a long time since I have been able to pick up a book and finish it. You could say I was in a bit of a reading funk over the holidays. It’s not that what I started and failed to finish was bad, I just couldn’t commit myself to reading.
Until Hunted.
I have always been madly in love with Beauty and the Beast, and this retelling was no disappointment.
Our protagonist, Yeva, has a strong character with a soft spot for her family. She has the same love for the forest as I have, only she takes it to different levels—places I could never go, things I could never do. I was able to live it through her.
The writing was beautiful. To me, it had an old, story-telling vibe that I love very much in stories.
Russian folklore can be found scattered throughout the novel in a tasteful, most interesting manner. Having grown up in Hungary, Europe and familiarizing myself with Hungarian folklore, I felt right at home reading references to another country’s folktales.
Throughout the book, we are given insights to the Beasts thoughts, which I found crucial to the story. It really added to the emotional depth.
Hunted deserves nothing less than five bright shining stars. It’s a story I could pick up again (if my TBR list wasn’t so long!) and enjoy a second time. I looked forward to reading more from Meagan Spooner.
