Book Review | Hunted by Darcy Coates

She only went off the trail for a moment...

22-year-old Eileen goes missing while hiking in the remote Ashlough Forest. Five days later, her camera is discovered washed downriver, containing bizarre photos taken after her disappearance.

Chris wants to believe Eileen is still alive. When the police search is abandoned, he and four of his friends create their own search party to scour the mountain range. As they stray further from the hiking trails and the unsettling discoveries mount, they begin to believe they’re not alone in the forest… and that Eileen’s disappearance wasn’t an accident.

By that point, it’s too late to escape.

MY THOUGHTS

I had a very good experience with Darcy’s previous book, ‘Dead Lake’ and that continued with her terribly underrated ‘Hunted’ too. Synopsis gave me pretty much the whole idea what to expect from this book, but it turned out much more than that!

Darcy Coates gives us a horror novel with the mystery/thriller elements in it. We see one part of events happening from Chris and his friends’ perspectives as they go on this unofficial search mission. Another part we see from Carla’s perspective, the police officer assigned on Eileen’s case and her investigation. I absolutely loved the way Coates laid out this story before us, absolutely loved her engaging and atmospheric writing! The revelation towards the end was good, it was not very predictable (not to me, atleast!).

All the characters were interesting to read, they were flawed and many of them were frustrating but won me by the end!

Talking about the characters -

Todd was one of Chris's friend who had a weird obsession with Eileen, which I found creepy as hell. I felt a little bad for him in some places, but he was still a creep!

Chris, one of our main POV, was a frustrating character for me. He started out very well, but as we got further into this search, I pulled my hair out so many times due to some of his choices. I get where he is coming from and understood his actions, but those actions were so not helpful for him and his friends.

Loved Anna and Hailey, both were complete opposite but smart as hell. Anna was the brain of the group and lifesaver on so many points. Hailey was a complete surprise for me and became one of my favourite by the end!

Carla, our another main POV, was complete opposite to Chris.I hated her in the beginning, but as we got into her backstory, we understood her as a person and why she was this way. I really liked her by the end!

Overall, it was surprisingly a very good book with interesting characters. I really liked this college friends group and their friendshio  which was a nice change for a horror novel!

Loved it!

OVERALL RATING - 4.5 Stars!