Release Day Review! Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Hunted by Meagan Spooner
Genre: Young Adult (Fractured Fairy Tale)
Date Published: March 14, 2017
Publisher: HarperTeen

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? 

Hunted by Meagan Spooner was one of the best Beauty and the Beast retellings I've read. Yeva was a complex and well thought out Beauty. She is a hunter. She' smart. She can survive on her own. The story is told primarily from her point of view. We get a little perspective from the Beast before most of the chapters. Through his point of view, you could really see his inner struggle as his humanity fought to overcome the beast and the beast fighting right back. He was pretty fascinating. Yeva has struggles herself with the death of her father to the feelings that start growing towards her captor. She worries about the legitimacy of these emotions rather than flying in head first.

The tie in of Russian fairy tales added a unique twist to the story. I'm not familiar with them, so it made these characters all the more interesting. I loved the imagery this author's writing creates; from the setting to the appearance of the Beast himself. It was all beautifully described, and I could envision it perfectly in my mind. I'm a lover of fairy tale retellings as a general rule, but this is definitely one you shouldn't miss.

The ARC of Hunted  by Meagan Spooner was kindly provided to me by the publisher through Edelweiss for review. The opinions are my own.

New York Times bestselling author Meagan Spooner grew up reading and writing every spare moment of the day, while dreaming about life as an archaeologist, a marine biologist, an astronaut. She graduated from Hamilton College in New York with a degree in playwriting, and has spent several years since then living in Australia. She's traveled with her family all over the world to places like Egypt, South Africa, the Arctic, Greece, Antarctica, and the Galapagos, and there's a bit of every trip in every story she writes.

She currently lives and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, but the siren call of travel is hard to resist, and there's no telling how long she'll stay there. She's the author of the award-winning Starbound trilogy (These Broken Stars, This Shattered World, Their Fractured Light) and the Skylark Trilogy (Skylark, Shadowlark, Lark Ascending) as well as the upcoming Beauty and the Beast retelling Hunted.

In her spare time she plays guitar, plays video games, plays with her cat, and reads. 

To learn more about Meagan Spooner and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter.