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slightbulb 's review for:
Heartless Hunter
by Kristen Ciccarelli
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had no expectations going into this book. I told myself to read and enjoy and not think too much about it. And it worked for the first 50-ish pages, until I started piecing information together and putting together fairly accurate plot predictions. Contrary to popular (?) opinion, I think predicting plot points isn’t a bad thing. Often, when writers try to subvert expectations and surprise readers, there is a cost to quality. I think Ciccarelli had a good outline to the book and stuck to it. It flowed well for the most part, and caused me no great mental (though a good deal of emotional) grief lol. Embarrassingly, I did get lightheaded a few times from breathing too fast during extra suspenseful parts. So I think the story was pretty engaging and had the right balance of surprise.
To that end, I think this book suffers from a “romance first” sort of problem, wherein the hierarchy of priorities descends from focus on the main couple, and in this case then trickles down into other interpersonal relationships, then plot, then relevant backstory and world-building. Not necessarily a bad thing, because sometimes romance simply does take the front spot sometimes. And I like that occasionally. It’s a nice break from “big thought” kinds of novels. But unfortunately it injures the ability of the book to offer what I needed in terms of technicals: what is the world like? What are the rules of magic?Why is it only Gideon and never Rune who points out the moth casting mark? Is Gideon actually not a very good investigator? (No, probably not, but he’s very athletic lol). Where is Harrow getting all this intel? What kinds of spells are there? Are there healing spells? Does Gideon actually have a spell mark after Rune used his blood? And a number of other small things that I’m hoping will be expanded on in the next book.
Heartless Hunter reminded me of For the Wolf and the Once Upon a Broken Heart series in that the super interesting magic system flounders and feels incomplete because the focus is on making two very attractive people fall in love for close to no reason other than that they’re attractive and have some sort of power/fate entanglement. HOWEVER, I think this book was so much more successful in creating a cohesive story that had tangible goals and fairly believable motivations—I mean, the characters admitted to themselves multiple times that their very tactical and practical reasons for using each other to meet an end goal were thinly veiled excuses to keep seeing one another (a win for self-awareness!)—that I can’t really complain.
Anyway. This was a very long-winded way of saying that I liked this book and found it to be a fun, exciting break. I will be reading the next one.
To that end, I think this book suffers from a “romance first” sort of problem, wherein the hierarchy of priorities descends from focus on the main couple, and in this case then trickles down into other interpersonal relationships, then plot, then relevant backstory and world-building. Not necessarily a bad thing, because sometimes romance simply does take the front spot sometimes. And I like that occasionally. It’s a nice break from “big thought” kinds of novels. But unfortunately it injures the ability of the book to offer what I needed in terms of technicals: what is the world like? What are the rules of magic?
Heartless Hunter reminded me of For the Wolf and the Once Upon a Broken Heart series in that the super interesting magic system flounders and feels incomplete because the focus is on making two very attractive people fall in love for close to no reason other than that they’re attractive and have some sort of power/fate entanglement. HOWEVER, I think this book was so much more successful in creating a cohesive story that had tangible goals and fairly believable motivations—I mean, the characters admitted to themselves multiple times that their very tactical and practical reasons for using each other to meet an end goal were thinly veiled excuses to keep seeing one another (a win for self-awareness!)—that I can’t really complain.
Anyway. This was a very long-winded way of saying that I liked this book and found it to be a fun, exciting break. I will be reading the next one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Sexual assault, Blood