Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Hunted

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Hunted by Darcy Coates

8 reviews

twinkle_flavored's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? No

4.0

Omgooorsh what a ride! Such a departure from the other D.C. I have read. This unfolds like a found footage documentary, and you get multiple character perspectives. This not only leaves you with bated breath at the end of most chapters come mid-book, but it makes for a truly fun (and at times super gross) read. I have been dipping my toes in the horror genre, and I found this very beginner friendly.

While I would have liked more character depth, there was enough to keep you either seething or rooting for someone. She wrote Todd all too well…I’ve known this man, and it just gave me the shivers each time we were on his chapters!

While definitely not cozy horror, it’s a casual fun horror, and I would definitely recommend it!

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omair's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

Hunted delivers in bunches what it promises, but does it do so at the cost of having the depth to be truly memorable?

Hunted is an easy read, with short chapters that change scenes at a frantic pace. Mixed with the extremely generic world - more on this in a moment - everything feels foggy or blurry. If this is by design, as I'm choosing to believe to credit author Darcy Coates, then it meets the mood at every turn of the page. If you don't believe this to be intentional, well, then the cracks in the story will likely prove to be too great.

From the first paragraphs, Hunted really imparts a vision of a horror B-movie, something made to be straight to streaming. The character and story tropes are laid on thick

and you realize there's a twist coming that you're not given enough clues to solve with certainty... well, unless you know the tropes already

One of our main POVs

is a group of post-teenagers that truly had me thinking of a knock-off Scooby-Doo quartet, just Shaggy replaced with a stereotypical jock. It doesn't help that they literally get in a van that clinched the Mystery Machine feel to me.

And with that, the mystery is afoot... except that it's not really a mystery at all. Pay just a bit of attention, and you quickly

begin to expect a masked villain at play.

Coates keeps the shrouded sense of it all pretty well though, and the story is never so dull that you're tempted to put it down and walk away.

But what it does lack is anything to really draw you in, to get lost amidst the details or to feel transported into its world. Nothing feels particularly vibrant or lived in. Frankly, I found myself questioning when and where the story takes place. It may as well be set in an alternate USA where they did adopt the metric system and Zuckerberg's rise stalled well into the 2010's.

In the end, I did not hate reading it, nor did I particularly enjoy it, but - most telling for me - I'm not even sure I'll remember having done so a month from now. As such, it's hard for me to recommend this to others, but maybe it'll be a guilty pleasure read for you. I finished it over the course of two nights, so could be worth for anyone wanting to sneak in a title while waiting for a hold on something else.

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elentikvah's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Picked this one up a complete whim after reading a friend's FB post on her progress through this thriller, and I'm glad that I did. Technically, this is another book in the horror genre for July's Discomfort Zone Book Club, though I did not read it for this reason. I decided to pick this book because it is high-rated author of this genre, and the premise of the story was similar to another book I read in my young adulthood that scared me spitless (back before I even knew "horror" was a thing!)

Overall, the premise is that a young woman disappears off a forest hiking trail, leaving behind only some cryptic photographs. Driven by concern for her safety and grief, her friends attempt to find her - therein horrific chaos ensues, with a surprising (maybe?) whodunit plot twist.

After reading three different "horror" books this month, I think that this just isn't the genre for me. This particular book was reasonably well-crafted, and it was an ok storyline, but it felt predictable and not at all scary to me.

Rating 3/5 stars
~409 pages
Kindle

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witchy_reads's review

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ahbmacgregor's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Pretty enjoyable overall! While it isn't a book that's going to win any prizes, this is still a pretty engaging read with just enough tension and mystery to keep it going. I went into it expecting something schlocky and was pleasantly surprised, and that's probably the way to do it.

Aside from Todd (ugh), none of the character perspectives were flawed in an annoying/frustrating way, and at least Todd feels less present when more perspectives are introduced.

Honestly I was more than happy to see the end of him, even if the decomposition was particularly graphic. He drove me nuts, especially in the blase way he treated wilderness survival, and that's not even mentioning the stalkerish obsession.

The twist was guessable, but not in a way that felt obvious and more like a reward for paying attention. In some ways it felt like the final confrontations were with the wrong people/not enough people, but that wasn't enough to ruin the book. It's worth picking this up if you don't mind some horror tropes and semi-expected beats.

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hexedmaiden's review

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dark tense medium-paced

3.0

I wanted to love this book, but it played like a standard slasher horror movie. A young woman goes out on a hiking trip and ends up missing. Her friends don't believe she's dead so they decide to go find her.

Of course one of the friends is an obsessed creep and I’m glad he gets fuckin killed for being a fuckin idiot who thinks he knows better.

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beckyremillard's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Eileen has gone missing while hiking by herself and the police don’t have any leads. Her brother and friends set out on their own to find her - whether she is alive or dead.

This book varied with how much it held my attention. I got kind of bored in the middle but the ending was captivating.

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rachelunabridged's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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