[W8E]⇒ [PDF] Hunted eBook Meagan Spooner

Hunted eBook Meagan Spooner

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Hunted eBook Meagan Spooner

4.5 perfectly shimmering stars !!!

I have been SO disappointed by the YA fantasy titles I've read lately, reading "Hunted" took me by surprise, and then totally wowed me. Sure, there are plenty of 4 and 5-star reviews for this novel, but a lot of horrendous books get showered in gushing praise. Especially YA fantasy titles.

I was actually inspired to pick up this book after reading a scathing 1-star review. A review that absolutely shredded the plot of this book as well as the characters.

I expected "Hunted" to be a trainwreck, a Beauty and the Beast retelling stuffed with tropes and plot holes and lackluster prose, but I was so curious about the Slavic/Russian folklore in this story that I couldn't help myself. The scathing one-star review had mentioned Slavic/Russian folklore played a role in the plot, and that was when I decided I had to read "Hunted."

And thank my fairy tale stars I did! Because this book is WONDERFUL. The very best way to spend a cold, gray afternoon at home. Sometimes the universe is kind.

The beginning was the hardest part for me, because the novel is set in medieval Russia, and there were a number of anachronisms that grated against my little history-loving brain. At first, I made note of them (as I always do when I read, especially if I think I might be reading a trainwreck). But the setting of the story soon switches, as Beauty journeys from her town to the enchanted/cursed land where the Beast lives, and the issues I had in the beginning all vanished.

The plot of this book honors the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale in so many brilliant ways, both in structure and character, and by weaving in the Slavic/Russian folklore, author Meagan Spooner added some truly delightful and inspiring depth to this classic story.

The prose of "Hunted" is well above average. The sentences flow, and some of the descriptive passages are quite lovely. The characters are beautifully drawn. Beast is a point of view character as well as Beauty, and I really loved his chapters. The relationship between Beauty and her two sisters made me tear up, especially toward the end of the book. There is a wonderful canine named Doe-Eyes and a reinvented Gaston character named Solmir. The magic of this story world was subtle, unique, and added so well to the dialogue and plot.

The novel had a quiet, relentless drive that built toward the last fifty pages, and it was this final section of the book that made me really sit back and say, WOW. Wow. Fricking awesome.

"Hunted" is a rare YA fantasy that features a lot of emotional depth in the characters, whether they are main characters or secondary. This is a novel in which actions have consequences, psychologically as well as physically, a story in which bodies are not machines full of limitless power, but fragile objects that often struggle and suffer.

My highest praise for "Hunted" is this: the novel has a depth of understanding about human nature, storytelling, and the power of reshaping stories, that made my brain explode with pleasure as I witnessed Beauty undergo the final part of her hero's journey. The finale of this book is wise and rich and perfect.

If you are a reader who loves fairy tale retellings, interesting magical worlds, or stories that weave folklore into their plots, I would recommend you add "Hunted" to your reading list.


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Hunted eBook Meagan Spooner Reviews

“She wept because she did not know what she wanted, and because she wanted everything.”

Hunted is a beautifully haunting retelling of Beauty and the Beast that follows the bones of the story while spinning a tale that is completely new and fresh as snow. I think this easily tops my favorite retelling for this particular tale.

Rating 4.5/5 stars.

Yeva is the youngest of three sisters (nicknamed "Beauty") and grew up hunting with her father, listening to tales of fantastical creatures that reside in their wood. She lives and breathes the forest and, if forced to marry, longs for a husband that will admire her for her skills. When tragedy strikes, and the family loses their fortune, they're forced to sell their belongings and move back into the hunting cabin from their youth.

When their father doesn't return from a hunting trip, Yeva fears the worst and leaves her beloved sisters to track him. What she finds is more than she bargained for...a beast unlike any other and a whole world full of creatures she believed only fairytale. Yeva is determined to kill the beast and return to her family but her quest to kill the seemingly unkillable creature unveils secrets that leaves her struggling to understand what to believe and what world she really belongs to.

Backdropped in a rural, Russian-esque universe, the cold, snow, and ice provide the perfect stage for the duality prevalent throughout the book. The winter forest is both merciless and unyielding, yet surreal and magical.

“The song wanted. It wanted in the way Yeva had always wanted, wanted not so much a thing as everything, something beyond naming, something more than, different, deeper. It was the want that kept her from saying yes to Solmir, though he offered her everything she could have named aloud; it was the want that brought her to the woods each day, the want that filled her dreams of some other life, something beyond what others desired; it was the want that screamed to the sky that she’d give everything, all of herself and all she’d ever be, to live one moment of that other life, the one she could not explain, not even to herself.”

Yeva is a wonderfully complex, flawed, and capable main character. She's torn between duty and caring for her family versus seeking the life she wants. The Beast, for once, is not a man transformed beastly but two warring souls cursed to be one. As such, the slow burn romance is more of a gradual awakening to a depth of feeling neither realized as Beast's human soul gradually strengths over the wolf. While told in Beauty's POV, you get snapshots of Beast's evolving mindset interspersed every couple of chapters and it is alien, wonderful, and super effective.

I loved how close Yeva was to her sisters. I loved that Yeva was a strong, capable heroine but still humanly flawed. I loved the Beast and his evolution. I loved that the book didn't sidestep major issues like possible Stockholm Syndrome. I loved the fairytales within a fairytale. Most of all, I love that the moral of the story is so different from the usual that life isn't a fairytale at all.

“There's no such thing as living happily ever after — there's only living. We make the choice to do it happily.”

Recommended for everyone. Especially those who like fairytale retellings, complex characters, and well-written stories.
Ever since I read Robin McKinley's Beauty, I've had a special place in my heart for Beauty & the Beast retellings. It's crashingly disappointing when the retelling does nothing but rehash old themes, and does nothing to uncover untapped nuances from the story.

I wasn't disappointed with Hunted. It's a fitting successor for Beauty. Yeva is her father's youngest daughter-- a daughter he taught his own love of the woods and hunting before becoming a rich merchant. When the inevitable misfortune hits his business, he moves them back to the small hunting cabin in the woods where Yeva first fell in love with the forest.

Only he becomes distant, obsessed, and then disappears. Its up to Yeva to find him, but she finds an abandoned castle and a beast instead.

Beauty, Yeva, in this retelling, is as much a Hunter as the Beast. And that's the twist that I loved so much in this telling, as well as the more nuanced emotional connections to her older sisters. Yeva is first taken because she can hunt-- and the emotional journey from captive to someone who would consider the Beast as more than just a tormentor stays true to Yeva's love of the hunt. She attempts to kill the Beast, and their back and forth in harming/not harming each other really spins this tale a interesting, dark way. Yeva has lots and lots of agency in this, not much is done TO her, and that I appreciated as well.

And then there are leshy and rusalka and other Slavic myths bound up in this, so that was cool. A dark, and more active-Beauty retelling, completely worth your while.
4.5 perfectly shimmering stars !!!

I have been SO disappointed by the YA fantasy titles I've read lately, reading "Hunted" took me by surprise, and then totally wowed me. Sure, there are plenty of 4 and 5-star reviews for this novel, but a lot of horrendous books get showered in gushing praise. Especially YA fantasy titles.

I was actually inspired to pick up this book after reading a scathing 1-star review. A review that absolutely shredded the plot of this book as well as the characters.

I expected "Hunted" to be a trainwreck, a Beauty and the Beast retelling stuffed with tropes and plot holes and lackluster prose, but I was so curious about the Slavic/Russian folklore in this story that I couldn't help myself. The scathing one-star review had mentioned Slavic/Russian folklore played a role in the plot, and that was when I decided I had to read "Hunted."

And thank my fairy tale stars I did! Because this book is WONDERFUL. The very best way to spend a cold, gray afternoon at home. Sometimes the universe is kind.

The beginning was the hardest part for me, because the novel is set in medieval Russia, and there were a number of anachronisms that grated against my little history-loving brain. At first, I made note of them (as I always do when I read, especially if I think I might be reading a trainwreck). But the setting of the story soon switches, as Beauty journeys from her town to the enchanted/cursed land where the Beast lives, and the issues I had in the beginning all vanished.

The plot of this book honors the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale in so many brilliant ways, both in structure and character, and by weaving in the Slavic/Russian folklore, author Meagan Spooner added some truly delightful and inspiring depth to this classic story.

The prose of "Hunted" is well above average. The sentences flow, and some of the descriptive passages are quite lovely. The characters are beautifully drawn. Beast is a point of view character as well as Beauty, and I really loved his chapters. The relationship between Beauty and her two sisters made me tear up, especially toward the end of the book. There is a wonderful canine named Doe-Eyes and a reinvented Gaston character named Solmir. The magic of this story world was subtle, unique, and added so well to the dialogue and plot.

The novel had a quiet, relentless drive that built toward the last fifty pages, and it was this final section of the book that made me really sit back and say, WOW. Wow. Fricking awesome.

"Hunted" is a rare YA fantasy that features a lot of emotional depth in the characters, whether they are main characters or secondary. This is a novel in which actions have consequences, psychologically as well as physically, a story in which bodies are not machines full of limitless power, but fragile objects that often struggle and suffer.

My highest praise for "Hunted" is this the novel has a depth of understanding about human nature, storytelling, and the power of reshaping stories, that made my brain explode with pleasure as I witnessed Beauty undergo the final part of her hero's journey. The finale of this book is wise and rich and perfect.

If you are a reader who loves fairy tale retellings, interesting magical worlds, or stories that weave folklore into their plots, I would recommend you add "Hunted" to your reading list.