YA Book Review: Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Title: Hunted

Author: Meagan Spooner

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retelling

Publisher: Harper Teen

Pub Date: March 14, 2017

Pages: 384

My Copy: Courtesy of Edelweiss and Harper Teen

Book Summary:

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?

Book Review:

An exquisite book. This is one of the best retellings of Beauty and The Beast that I have read in a very long time. Everything that Meagan Spooner does is definitely different and the way she writes this book is completely unique and beautiful.

I love how this book alternates between Yeva-Beauty and The Beast point of views. You see that both Yeva and Beast’s lives are not easy. In fact Beast is looking for something, but we don’t know what that is exactly until much later. Yea is living a nice life, and learning how to be a lady as she is a member of the baronessa’s court. These ladies have a great chance to meet a husband and much more.

So of course her father used to be a hunter and would hunt for things in the woods, and then he met Yeva’s mother and he had a few daughters. So when he loses his fortune, Yeva and her sisters think that this is going to be bad for them as they might not have as good opportunities for marriage. So of course when they go back to the cabin, their lives change in ways they can’t imagine. They don’t get to see many other humans besides each other. Their father has to hunt for their food while Yeva and her other two sisters, not the younger ones try to fix the cabin up the best they can. Her father hunts, but during a hunt, he doesn’t come back.

The Beast sees him one day in his forest and things go badly of course, and Yeva’s father sees him and becomes obsessed with finding this Beast. The Beast tries to get away because he needs a hunter to find the Firebird. The Firebird if he manages to find it, can break his curse. So of course things transpire that leads Yeva to go hunting. The beast of course sees Yeva and thinks that she is the answer to his problems.

The Beast and The Yeva go through some up and downs. He is trying to teach her how to track and hunt what he is looking for. They start off as two individuals who hate each other. She really is put through a ringer because of the Beast. The Beast needs her to help him. They start to form a relationship that doesn’t start off on the best of terms, but they learn to come to respect each other. Their relationship starts to become much more deeper. I like how the author really developed their personalities. The Beast eventually lets her go back to her family.

Once back with her family, she finds that a lot of time has passed. Things have changed. One of her sisters has died. Not to mention, Solomir, has fallen in love with another sister and is about to become the new baron, as the old baron doesn’t have any children and appointed him as the heir. This was an interesting development. I also thought how people treated her differently as she was different in a way they hadn’t seen before. I also like how she has fallen in love with the Beast and only realized it when she is home.

Also not to mention she finds the Firebird on her way back to the Beast. I like how the Beast listens to her fairy tale, again with intense interest. The firebird tells Yeva indirectly that she is the answer to the Beast’s curse. When she does indeed meet the beast again, things happen between them and somehow she meets the man behind the beast and breaks the curse. I really like the way that Yeva and Beast find their happily ever after. 

This was a great retelling.

Rating:

Four Hearts