Hunted by Meagan Spooner 
Published by HarperTeen on March 14, 2017
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 384
Format: eBook
Source: Amazon
New York Times bestselling author Meagan Spooner spins a thoroughly thrilling Beauty and the Beast story for the modern age, expertly woven with spellbinding romance, intrigue, and suspense that readers won’t soon be able to forget.
Beauty knows the Beast's forest in her bones—and in her blood. After all, her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering its secrets.
So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters out of their comfortable home among the aristocracy and 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 the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. The Beast.
Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange creature back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of magical creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin, or salvation.
Who will the Beauty, or the Beast?
This started out strong but the second half dragged on and the entire ending was disappointing.
I saw a recommendation on this story while it was on sale as an interesting twist on the Beauty and the Beast story where Beauty was a hunter going after the Beast.
Yeva was the youngest daughter of three and when her father makes a bad business decision, losing everything, they return to their father’s old tiny hunting cabin in the woods. Yeva is very happy since she wants to hunt again with her father instead of attending ladies’ lunches at the Baroness’s house. But her father won’t let her come hunting with him and he leaves for weeks at a time. When he returns to house for more supplies, he keeps acting crazier and crazier and muttering about being stalked by an intelligent creature. While he is gone, Yeva takes his old bow and hunts small game to keep her sister’s fed.
When her father fails to return after weeks Yeva leaves her sisters, who beg her not to go, but Yeva hoping to bring her father back home. Yeva finds her father’s body and at the same time she finds the beast who her father declared was stalking him. Yeva attempts to kill the beast, but he lays a trap for Yeva and locks her in the dungeon. See the beast needs a hunter to find (and kill?) whatever put the curse on him. He hopes real hunters will come looking for Yeva and it takes him weeks of Yeva in his dungeon to realize that not only is no one coming looking for Yeva but that tiny, female that she is, Yeva is the skilled hunter has has been waiting for.
He takes her to his dilapidated castle in the hidden valley and takes her out hunting every day for hours a day to teach her how to hear the magical creatures that surround his house. (What happened to her being the perfect skilled hunter?) Until the winter comes and she is stuck for months in the house, while the beast hides from her. All the while, Yeva is waiting for a time to kill the beast as revenge because she believes he killed her father. The beast uses her need for revenge to keep her at his side.
The final revelation was that both the Beast and Beauty were continually concerned with ‘what’s next’ that they would always be unhappy. Yeva thought she wanted to return to the forest with her father and hunt, that would make her happy. Then she get captured by the beast and thinks returning home will make her happy and when she finally returns home, she want to return to the beast, that would make her happy. While the Beast was cursed because every time he achieve what he wanted, it was only what he didn’t have that he was so focused on. While I get the idea that we should be happy with what we have, and many times people will say, ‘when I lose weight, all my problems will go away’ or once I am married or once I have money…’ So, yes we should learn to be content as we are, but it is human nature to want to achieve more. That’s why we strive for better jobs or fixing our homes to a style we prefer, rather than just be happy with a roof over our heads.
I think the worse part is that as soon as Yeva realizes their mistake, suddenly the beast is human again. There seemed to be a hint of the beast being two natured–the man and the animal or wolf. It had been many years that the wolf took over but the longer he spends with Yeva, the more the human started to dominate. This seemed to be the merging of the man and wolf characters from a fairy tale that Yeva tells but suddenly he’s human, what happened to the wolf part? I figured break the curse and pow, we will have man and wolf lying on the floor. I expected fireworks and got a birthday candle.
The first half of the book was very promising but the second half dragged on and the ending was unsatisfying.
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