Review - The Hunter by L.J. Shen

The Hunter by L.J. Shen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars🌟

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I finished this book yesterday but had to wait to gather my thoughts for the review. It isn't everyday your favorite author disappoints you.
I never ever thought about giving such a low rating to a L. J. Shen book, but here we are. I'll try to explain my best the reason for the rating.
After reading the ARCs and the Beta reviews, I was most excited for this book. I was literally counting seconds for The Hunter to go live.

Unfortunately, before reading, I was overwhelmed by the low ratings my friends had given this book. I mean, Angry God wasn't my best read for sure, but how bad can Shen write to elicit such a response from the multitude of the readers?

My answer :- Pretty Bad.

Reason #1- The awful dialogues. Now, I understand the authors need to insert humor in her words but Shen took it too far. In her attempt to make Hunter appear as a funny character, she made him out to be a total creep. Negative 🌟

Reason #2- The repetition. Having read almost all the books by Shen, I could sense a pattern in her books. It's not a bad thing necessarily, but when the characters (and not just the mc's) are repeated just with a different name, it kills something - creativity. Negative 🌟

Here, I'll give you an example -
👉Lana was just the same character as Via in Pretty Reckless. Even the dialogue is kinda repeated.

Via - “Four years ago, you flaunted all you have in my face while I had nothing. Now, I’m going to take every single thing that belongs to you and make a show everyone in town is going to have fun watching while doing it. I want it all, Daria. Your dedicated mom, sweet sister, loyal dad, and popular friends. If you have a boyfriend, I’ll take him, too. And fuck him better.”

Lana -“You want to be an archer? I will become a better one. You get a pet? I’ll kill it. A boyfriend? I will steal him. Whatever you acquire in life, Sailor, I will take it from you. Because you took something from me.”

👉The whole situation of the story - a recovering rake in need of a baby sitter to watch him over is similar to Midnight Blue.

👉The discovery that Hunter is not actually the son of Gerald but is a result of his mother's infidelity is awfully similar to the situation of Cèlian Laurent in Dirty headlines.

Reason #3- The awful MC. Hunter was the worst hero I could ever imagine. He was immature, childish and didn't have a single alpha bone in his body. It was a torture to be in his mind which was filled with the thoughts of sex and... nothing, just sex.

I cannot bring myself to hate Sailor, but considering that she was Troy's daughter, I expected her to have more personalilty. She was the rebooted version of Sparrow, nothing great. Negative 0.5 🌟.

I so desperately wanted this to be a 5 star read for me, but maybe the next one, I guess?




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