For Who Could Ever Learn to Love a Beast? - HUNTED by Meagan Spooner

Title: Hunted
Author: Meagan Spooner
Series: n/a
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: March 14, 2017
Source: galley received from publisher
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

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?

So many Beauty and the Beast retellings, so little time. But I made time for this one. Just like I'll make time to take Katie to see the movie on Friday. Because Beauty and the Beast has been my absolute favorite story since childhood...and because Meagan Spooner has already proven her writing chops to me by way of the Starbound series she co-authored with Amie Kaufman.

I loved the chapters from the Beast's perspective, showing his gradual return to humanity the longer Yeva was in his presence. It was kind of like those thrillers where you get to read from the serial killer's point-of-view and get in his head a little. Except not quite as creepy. And it helps to garner compassion for his plight rather than just seeing him as the Beast holding Yeva captive.

Hunted definitely has that fairy tale feel to it: lush imagery, snowy woods, hidden castle. Spooner's writing really transports you there to the middle of those woods, slowly but surely. I was tracking alongside Yeva, captivated and wary, in turns. There is nothing overtly scary or different about this telling, but it is so atmospheric that I couldn't help but be pulled into the story. Not only has Spooner borrowed from the tale of Beauty and the Beast, but she's also woven into the story the tale of The Golden Bird and how the two stories collide is rather magnificent.

There's also this underlying subtext of be careful what you wish for, a definite theme of wanting and yearning and not knowing what you're yearning for. The story felt like heartbreak upon heartbreak but it's also so unforgiving and romantic. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word. This world is so idyllic but also so lovely and so full of love, familial and otherwise.

I've read a lot of Beauty and the Beast retellings over the years, and I definitely have my favorites. And I would have to include Hunted among them. It's a slow build to an increasingly beautiful story, one that I know I'll be reading again.

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

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.

Find Meagan:

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Labels: beautiful covers, beauty and the beast, fantasy, harper-collins, hunted, meagan spooner, retellings, reviews