Hunted

This was a fantastic book! I listened to the audiobook and it sucked me in so much, I ended up doing random things or going on longer walks in order to listen to more at a time.

To start, I think this is a great retelling of a fairy tale retold time and time again. I've read many retellings of Beauty and the Beast, yet this one still felt fresh. While many of the basics are still there: Beauty, Beast, castle, conflict over father, Beauty held prisoner, etc. there are so new elements or twisted ones, that the story took a life of its own.
Either way, this book reads and holds the reader, like a fairy tale.

I absolutely loved Yeva who is shown to be independent and self-reliant. While she has flaws, they make her seem real, because otherwise her perfection would be unattainable. I love how Beast is written and the kind of character he made. Between these two characters, things are tense, but there are also almost laughable moments. The side characters aren't as developed as Yeva and Beast, but they do not always feel like wallflowers. They may make you attached to them.

The romance.... I like how the romance between Yeva and Sommire (?) was done with it slowly building. I thought that was nice and I would have rooted for them if I did not like the Beast so much. Yeva and the Beast, the romance was done pretty well, I thought. It is subtle, it isn't the main story line, and the unhealthy aspects of their time together are even addressed. I'm not sure if they were addressed as fully as I would have liked, but talk about abusive relationships did happen. This was an awesome moment, I think.

There is a moral, a lesson to this story and I think it is a good one.

Now, the narration. At first I wasn't sure of the Beast's voice– in fact I wasn't sure if it was part of the book or like a quotation (lol), but after I figured out it was in fact the Beast I liked it. Midway through I found that I really enjoyed the narration and by the end of the book I have decided to look at what other books the narrators have worked on. True, not all the characters had different voices, but I think it worked out well. Yeva's narrator (Saskia Maarleveld) speaks so smoothly and is captivating while Beast's narrator (Will Damron), while not given a lot of speaking time, made me emotional and hooked me even in those short moments. The only thing is not much emotion was conveyed in Yeva's parts through voice alone. I still had to mentally change how things were said to match the “said, whisper, angrily, sadness” parts, because otherwise Yeva seems to calm, levelheaded, and almost emotionless all the time.
I'm being more lenient with Saskia Maarleveld because I truly did enjoy her voice. She has a great storytelling voice, which is something I'm picky about.