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Book: “Heartless Hunter” by Kristen Ciccarelli
Publishing Info: Wednesday Books, February 2024
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.
Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can’t help but find herself falling for.
Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?
Review: I debated requesting this book for a while. This author has been very hit and miss for me in the past. While I struggled a bit with the first book I read by her (“The Last Nimsara”), I barely managed to not DNF the second book in the trilogy (“The Caged Queen”) and never even bothered with the third one. That said, I do remember thinking that the overall quality of writing was high and that the characters, especially in the first book, were fairly good. Those are two pretty foundational aspects of storytelling, so if an author has those in hand, I always feel like there’s a decent chance that a book by them will work for me. But, while this book didn’t sink to the lows of “The Caged Queen,” it also didn’t change my opinion massively about this author. Let’s get into the details!
I’m going to start off with a point that may at first seem tangential, but I swear, I have a point. A few weeks ago, a reader left a comment on one of my more negative reviews expressing relief that they had passed on the book in question. Specifically, they mentioned being glad that they have a fairly thorough vetting process before accepting books for review. Now, I also vet my book choices, trying to balance what I prefer in my own read alongside trying to cover the books that I know many people are interested in and those for which they may appreciate having reviews that provide some insights. And there’s a whole debate going on currently about how much or little publishers/marketers should rely on tropes when advertising their books. You can definitely see where publishers are falling into the trap that a popular trope is all you need to make a popular book. But, for this kind of vetting process, some basic tropes up front can be very helpful in either grabbing my attention or warning me away. And (finally, my point) this book failed to mention anywhere in its book description that the love stories is not only a love triangle, but a love triangle with two brothers as the options. *sigh* Frankly, if I had know that, I could have steered clear.
I won’t go on and on about the love triangle itself, but I always find the whole “brothers” thing kind of icky in a love triangle. Add on that it’s barely a love triangle since once of the love interests has a POV and the other doesn’t, so you always know which way this is going. And it’s all the more frustrating when the one who is the (of course) enemy is set up as this great love, and the other is the solid guy who’s been Rune’s friend and support system for years. You know, helping her, keeping her secrets…not trying to genocide her people like certain (oh so hot) other brothers.
Anyways, that last point gets to one of my main struggles with this book: the characters. For one thing, it falls into the trap that I find all too often in YA where its main characters have to be teenagers for it to be YA, but the things they’ve accomplished already in life are so incredibly unbelievable in the time they’ve had to do them that my suspension of disbelieve is immediately and thoroughly broken right from the start. Why oh why can’t authors just age up their characters to their early to mid 20s, call it a NA book, and probably get the exact same readership out of their book, but at least now it’s all plausible? I honestly don’t understand it.
I also just didn’t buy the primary “love story” between Rune and Gideon. I’ve read other witch/witch hunter love stories, and there have been some that definitely prove this set up can work. But for me to buy any burgeoning love story, the witch hunter has to have a pretty serious change of heart and regret sequence. But…Gideon just seemed fine with his choices of genocide? Because he had been hurt by a witch? It read as strange, and, more over, it really made me struggle to understand Rune’s willingness to overlook the realities of this guy she was becoming so interested in.
The book also tackles some fairly serious topics about sexual assault, and I’m not sure how well it was handled. I don’t really feel that the book gave this serious topic the framing it needed to be useful. Instead, it felt more like shock value and as a way to justify the things that the characters were thinking and doing. The seriousness of this subject also paired strangely with some of the “Bridgerton”-like aspects of the story, when the book would switch into “society mode” with a strong focus on fashion and gossip. And, look, I enjoy “Bridgeton” and enjoy a good “fantasy of manners” as much (if not more!) than the next person, but it paired very strangely with some of the darker tones of this book.
Overall, I struggled to enjoy this one. Again, the writing itself was strong enough, but the author makes choices with her characters, especially with their romances, that just don’t work for me. However, that said, I do think there are a decent number of readers who will enjoy this one, especially if you’re a fan of this author’s previous work. And, I do think this is a case where the use of tropes in the book description might have helped get this in the right readers’ hands, as well as changing it from YA (why?!?!?) to NA.
Rating 7: For me, this was a 6, but I’ll admit this came down to some very specific preferences of my own. Readers who have a more flexible approach to their romances may enjoy this one!
Reader’s Advisory:
“Heartless Hunter” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Fantasy Romance and Female fantasy authors – Children’s, YA and adult.
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