Blog Tour: The Hunted Review

The Hunted by Kristy Berridge

Release Date ~ April 30, 2011
Sid Harta Publishers
ISBN13: 9781921829529
E-copy received from author for blog tour
Goodreads Synopsis:
Elena Manory is by no means an ordinary teenage girl. Being born with the ability to heal herself from any injury, and with the knowledge that on her eighteenth birthday she will become a Vampire, Elena is aware that she is more than a little different from other girls her age.
It isn’t until she meets William Granville, an alluring and impossibly handsome vampire, that she begins to question her destiny and what secrets the Institute of Magical Intervention and her adopted family have withheld—secrets that could change the fates of not only her own life, but of the lives of all the immortals.
As events spiral out of control, William may be the only person Elena can place her trust in. He, and Elena’s magical family, must fight to save her, joining forces to defeat a common, deadly foe. For William, it is his chance to save the girl that he has searched eternity to find.
The Huntd takes a chance and blends together a wide variety of elements typically found in YA paranormals; and although it wouldn't work for just any book, The Hunted delivers on this and the result is an very unique and interesting blend of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Twilight - and the fact that there's any similarity to Buffy at all just makes it awesome!

1. Snarky, brave heroine:
   Elena is exactly the kind of heroine I love to read about in my YA books: she's stubborn to a fault, brave as can be, and snarky. Guys, I have to say it- I LOVE SNARKY. She had all these fantastic little witty one-liners, and some that weren't even that witty but hilarious all the same. I loved the fact that she was totally kickass and not afraid to get her hands dirty. She jumped right in with both feet, and never really looked back. And did I mention she's a lot like Buffy? Seriously, if you love Buffy then you'll like Elena.
2. Sibling relationship and secondary characters:
   I have a confession to make. I know that William is supposed to be the one I'm swooning after in this book, but for me he just didn't cut it. It was ALL about Lucas. I have the biggest book crush on him after reading this. The way that Kristy depicted the sibling rivalry and love between Elena and Lucas was flawless; it just doesn't get more real than these two. The dialogue was fantastic, and they came across like two parters in crime. And it really helped Lucas jump off the page as a secondary character. I'd actually read a spin-off book series featuring Lucas because he's just so great and so much fun!
3. Blended mythology:
   I found it really interesting to see how many different mythological elements Kristy incorporated into the story; there are vampires and werewolves, and while that's been done before, there are also slayers (even if they aren't called slayers) and witches/wizards. Plus some hybrid creatures thrown in there. The book is just so rich and has an incredibly detailed background story, you can really tell a lot of thought has been put into it.

I also have to say that some of the romance was very well-done and pretty hot. But it did end up being kind of over the top towards the end, and really did remind me of Twilight. Which could be a good thing for those of you that like Twilight, but it didn't win me over. I just couldn't buy into any of the romance by the end of the book, because it didn't seem realistic as the characters just seemed to jump right into it. And Elena just seemed a little too extra special to me, like there was barely any flaw to her character.
And as I mentioned the amount of detail in this story, it really is heavy on the background story. There were a few times when it felt like an absolute info dump and I was struggling to keep straight exactly what was going on.

I think I would have liked it a bit more if it had been faster-paced, but I think the next book will easily redeem this. The Hunted felt more like it was setting up the actual story than anything else, and I think the sequel will benefit from this and I have high hopes for that story!

There were a few grammatical errors, but I didn't find them overly distracting from the story and there wasn't an abundance of them; all were very minor.