Hunted ~ Meagan Spooner

I don’t read a lot of YA anymore.  I got on a kick a while back when many of the adult novels I was reading were really dark, graphic and, to be honest, depressing.  Ironically, a lot of the YA novels being published lately fall into the latter category now!  But, at the time, I found myself enjoying more lighthearted teen books.  Recently, I saw a dedication from a book posted on Twitter or Facebook, which made me investigate the book and author.  It read:

"To the girl

who reads by flashlight

who sees dragons in the clouds 

who feels most alive in worlds that never were

who knows magic is real

who dreams

This is for you."

The post asked the reader which book this dedication belonged to, and in the comments section I discovered it was the YA novel Hunted by Meagan Spooner - a Beauty and the Beast retelling.  Luckily, my library had it on the shelves and I fell into the book as easily as falling into a magical fairy tale.

Set in the 13th century around the time of the Mongol invasion of Rus,' this tale follows a father and three daughters who live in a bustling village. The father was a famous hunter who settled into a merchant’s life after he married and had children.  The mother died at some point, and the family of four has settled into normal roles and routines.  The youngest daughter, Yeva, called Beauty by her family, acts as a companion to the Baroness in town, but secretly only wants to be out in the forest hunting with her father (he used to take her when she was younger).  When her father loses the family fortune and moves the daughters to the outskirts of town, Yeva is much happier in spite of their reduced circumstances.

One day the father goes hunting and comes back raving about magical creatures and other strange things.  The family believes he is losing his mind, and when he goes missing, Yeva leaves her sisters to try to find him.  What she finds in the woods sets up the rest of the story of Beauty and ……you guessed it: the Beast.

The author has done an incredible job of describing the era of the story, the frozen landscape of the setting, and the relationships among the characters.  The story of Beauty and her experiences with the Beast are new and fresh, and the reader cannot help but get lost in this fairy tale.  Great escape reading (but you might want to wait until it's warmer: this book will have you shivering)!