Review: The Great Hunt (The Great Hunt #1) by Wendy Higgins

The Great Hunt (#1) by Wendy Higgins
pub 3/8/16 by HarperTeen
Young Adult - Fantasy
Received via Edelweiss

As a fan of Wendy Higgins’ paranormal romance The Sweet Trilogy, I was excited to see what she’d do with fantasy. And what she created was a fairly imaginative world. But the strength of her story truly came from her characters and the relationships between them. It’s that ability to create characters I can easily fall in love with that consistently draws me in to her books.

When a strange and dangerous beast begins terrorizing the town of Lochlanach and killing its people, King Lochson sends out a decree—whoever kills the beast will win his eldest daughter’s, Princess Aerity’s, hand in marriage. When we’re introduced to the world, it’s a dark time and the fear and desperation are a palpable thing. And in the middle of all that is Princess Aerity who I felt genuinely brought light and warmth to the book. When her fathers asks about offering her hand in marriage, she steps up in a way that is admirable and indicative of her queenliness. But you can’t help feeling sad for her because she wants a marriage borne out of love. So when hunters arrive in droves to slay the beast, you can imagine how she feels. Until she sees brooding and handsome Paxton Seabolt. Paxton is simultaneously attracted and resentful of Aerity (he’s anti-royalty and anti-marriage for that matter). But Aerity continues to surprise him by being the opposite of everything he expected a princess to be. And Aerity continues to follow her heart, even when she shouldn’t, and I, for one, was certainly cheering her on in that regard. The tension between them was certainly one of my favorite parts of the book.

And my other favorite part was Aerity’s relationship with family. Her siblings, parents and cousins all play a significant role and again, the love between them all brought another much-needed level of light-heartedness to counteract the dark tone of the book.

(Some) reservations

Even though I quickly got into the story, I would say that about 2/3 of the way, the plot started to falter for me. There was some extra romances that I felt were unneeded and sub-plots that didn’t interest me at all. The book was at its best when focused on Aerity and Paxton’s journeys. And the ending! When a certain discovery is made, I got really excited for the author to do something different and when it went down a very obvious route instead, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It was sad because the book started off strong but didn’t end on that same note.

Do I recommend?

In spite of my reservations, I do. Even though I ended up just liking the book instead of loving it, I think Wendy Higgins fans and those who love paranormal/fantasy romances will still enjoy it.

Collaborative feature with Alexa! 

Aerity and her family each have special talents. If you had to pick one of their abilities to have, which would it be?

Aerity's talent is on the aerial silks and that would be pretty cool because I've been wanting to try aerial yoga. But I can't help but being drawn to her sister's skill of horseback riding. You all know how much I love horses! So I'd have to go with that.