The Hunt

It takes great talent to have me looking like this while reading the first chapter. I kid you not, I sobbed for young Tempest. It started of so well. I was willing to rally up the troops and go to war for her. It had all the makings for a 5 star book. I was bouncing in my seat with excitement, when it started to make a turn for the worse. The author, writing in the third person, kept using Tempest's name too often, instead of replacing it with ‘she' or rephrasing the sentence to help with the flow of the story. I kept tripping over “Tempest this,” “Tempest that” and “but Tempest.” Soon I was all fed up with poor Tempest. Other reasons that influenced my low rating: 1) Tempest was rather slow. I get it she's young, barely 18. If you give me a character who does not listen to ANYONE (even her mentors) and who makes reckless decisions out of ignorance and arrogance, AT LEAST have her be quick on the up take. In other words, realise that the King (a forty year old) who tries to force her into a sexual relationship (after he failed to kill her) might be a manipulative liar, and the people who are treating her well and nursing her wounds, honest. I know it seems far fetched, bizarre even.It takes Tempest the WHOLE BOOK to even consider this. There were some scenes were I cringed, her unwavering belief in her king made her unsympathetic to the pain and suffering of her ‘so called' enemies. 2) Nothing really happens I was expecting a quest, danger, awesome fighting scenes and a bad ass heroine who reminds me of Yelena in [b:Poison Study 60510 Poison Study (Study, #1) Maria V. Snyder https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388519019l/60510.SY75.jpg 1180409]. What I got was a heroine who acts before she thinks, who is slightly over confident in her fighting skills and who is consumed with judgmental prejudice. She's also under house arrest for a long period of the book. So we have a few scenes that goes like this:In terms of plot, the main focus is not evil schemes and action driven scenes, but Tempest's actions and self realisation (of the latter, I am not entirely convinced). 3) Little to no ‘enemies-to-lovers' Mostly cuz the heroine lives in her own ignorant world and cannot see WHAT IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. Moving on.This book has a lot of potential and I am sad that it did not live up to the expectations I had.