BOOK
REVIEW : Hunted
By
Meagan Spooner
BY
SULPHIA IQBAL
I’d
like to first thank HarperTeen for the ARC version of this book.
MY THOUGHTS
Hunted was on my list of most anticipated YA novels
of 2017 and it did not fail to impress. It’s a retelling of Beauty and
the Beast with mentions and incorporations of Russian folktales
Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf, The Firebird and
Princess Vasilisa, and Vasilisa the Beautiful.
Yeva, or as her father likes to call her Beauty, aches
to ditch her aristocratic life in the city to hunt in the forest with her
father, just like they had when she was younger. After her father loses all of
his fortune, Yeva’s family is forced to move back to their winter home in the
outskirts of town. Yeva is secretly glad : finally she can hunt alongside her
father. Yeah….except this is YA and obviously things aren’t going to be so
happily ever after.
When
her father goes missing after a hunting trip, Yeva, despite the protests of her
sisters, decides to go after him. When she discovers his corpse, she makes it
her goal to find the creature responsible for his death - the same creature her
father was obsessing over before he left. But soon, Yeva finds herself
captured, put in a cell, and concealed from seeing the face of her captor.
Yeva
was a very developed character. Her genuine love for hunting and the
wilderness, her distaste for the aristocratic ways of the higher class -
definitely a refreshing change from the original Beauty and the Beast. I
also enjoyed the side characters like Yeva’s sisters and Solmir aka Gaston.
Gaston’s character was completely different, not made out to be the villain like
he was in the Disney version, and I actually came to like him.
Unsurprisingly,
when reading the reviews for this book, I noticed Stockholm syndrome come up. I
haven’t seen many works of literature or entertainment with this condition to
fully understand what it means , but based on this:
I
believe Yeva did not have Stockholm syndrome. Throughout the book, she does not
create a psychological alliance with the Beast, rather she puts up with
what she’s told to do so she can eventually kill him as revenge for supposedly
killing her father. It wasn’t a strategy that her mind just came up with as a
means of survival; she deliberately chose to do this all while fully being
aware that Beast was potentially dangerous and untrustable. Her change in
attitude towards Beast is conscious and slow, and only shows after Beast
himself changes his ways. And like Belle, Yeva actually wanted to leave, and
she does. When she returns, it is not to be his prisoner, but to help him as
she senses he is in danger.
That
all said, I think Spooner did an excellent job of incorporating this
enthralling classic with feminism, independence, and her own little Russian
twist.
QUOTES
“To the girl
who reads by flashlight
who sees dragons in the clouds
who feels most alive in worlds that never were
who knows magic is real
who dreams
This is
for you”
“If
you’re reading this book, then you’re also that child reading by flashlight and
dreaming of other worlds. Don’t be scared of her, that inner Beauty, or her
dreams. Let her out. She’s you, and she’s me, and she’s magic.”
An
enthralling retelling of Russian folktales and Beauty and the Beast
Check
it out at the library and goodreads :
RATINGS: 4.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment