Hello book friends! I have been giving nothing but radio silence again these past weeks, but well… Moving continents and starting a new job kinda wrecks your normal schedule.
Thankfully, I was still able to squeeze in some reading once I settles into my new routine. One of the books I recently finished was The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo. I was able to read an ARC through NetGalley and the book comes out next month already! This is more YA fantasy than anything else I’ve read recently, but it ended up being quite enjoyable. the night hunt
Check out the content warning below, and I’ll tell you my thoughts!
The Night Hunt
By Alexandra Christo
My Rating: ★★★.5☆Published 10 October 2023 by Feiwel & Friends
Fantasy | Monsters | Epic quest
From Alexandra Christo, the author of To Kill a Kingdom, comes The Night Hunt, a dark fantasy romance about a monstrous girl who feeds on fear and the Gods-cursed boy who falls in love with her.
Atia is a monster who feeds on fear. As the last of her kind, she hides in the shadows of the world to escape the wrath of the unpredictable Gods. Silas is a Herald, carrying messages and ferrying the dead as punishment for a past he can’t remember. Stripped of his true name, he yearns to recover his identity.
Atia would never dream of allying with someone like him, but when she breaks a sacred law and the Gods send monsters to hunt her, Silas offers an irresistible deal: he’ll help avenge her family and take on the Gods who now hunt her, if she helps him break his curse and restore his humanity. All they need to do is kill three powerful creatures: a vampire, a banshee, and one of the very Gods who destroyed both their lives. Only together can they finally rewrite their destinies.
My Thoughts
The premise of the story sounds super fun and overall I really enjoyed it. However, I do think that the worldbuilding could’ve been a bit better. Right now, I feel like the world Atia lives in was just kind of… there. I would’ve liked to see some more world descriptions, as right now I struggled visualizing the lands Atia grew up in.
I did majorly enjoy the characters, though. The story is dual POV, which I always love. Atia’s character arc especially was fun to read. She starts of a grumpy loner and ends up… well still being grumpy, but not as alone anymore. She truly learns the value of friendship and working together for a common goal. Silas is a good counterpart for Atia, as he is quite opposite to her. It makes for fun interactions. His arc was also fun to read. I do feel that the development of the side characters deserved some more attention, though. They mostly existed to support Atia in her goal, but they also interact with each other. I wish that those interactions were a little more prominent, so that the relationships between all characters would be more rounded.
The plot was pretty solid, too. Right from the beginning you know there’s something not entirely right about the Gods and what happened to Atia’s kind. But it’s something to which the answer is not easy to guess. There were plenty of twists, but there was one specific one that I did not see coming at all, which I love. It’s quite impressive really, because the reader gets no chance to even guess what it is. I felt the buildup to the finale was done quite well, but I do wish the Gods were more involved throughout the whole story.
And that’s it for my review of The Night Hunt! Overall it was quite the fun fantasy read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys YA fantasy and would like something just a little different.
Find more reviews in my archive!
