Hunting Under the Blood Moon (Hunter's Moon - Lori Handeland)

Member Name: Brooke3

Product:	Hunter's Moon - Lori Handeland
Date:	04/06/09 (863 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Enjoyable, good plot, good character development

Disadvantages: Not romance

-Plot-
When Leigh's family and fiance were killed in a werewolf attack she discovered that there were things in the world that are truly terrifying. The only way she had to deal with what had happened was to become a werewolf hunter. A couple of years later, hunting werewolves is the only thing that she lives for.

Something's going on in Crow Valley. Werewolves are acting strangely and Leigh fears that the werewolf who murdered her family is involved.

To complicate matters further Leigh meets Damien who is she is immediately attracted to. But is there more to Damien than meets the eye?

-Opinion-
This is the second book Lori Handeland's Night Creature's series and I would recommend reading the first book before this one. You can still enjoy this book without reading the first but I think you would appreciate it more having read the series in order.

When I first started reading this book I was struck by how similar it is to the first. The way that Damien and Leigh meet in this book is almost identical to the way that Will and Jessie met in the first book, the only difference is that where Will was completely naked Damien is only topless. I thought that the author could have come up with something more original than this.

As with the first book it is written in first person and again this didn't bother me because I really liked the character. Leigh is in many ways very similar to Jessie, both very strong and independent women but at the same time they are very distinct characters. Leigh is basically a product of her past. Whereas once she would have been cowering in the corner away from the werewolves the pain of losing everyone that she loves and watching them die has turned her into someone who can hunt werewolves. I liked that she wasn't just magically able to kill monsters and that you get to see the transformation from someone very ordinary to a successful hunter through Leigh's memories. It made it more plausible.
What particularly impressed me about the writing style is that you could tell the difference between the writing in this book and the writing in Blue Moon, the first book in the series. Both are of course written by the same author and both are written in first person but Handeland seems to know the characters well enough to adjust her writing to fit them. You can tell that it's Leigh who is writing and not Jessie (the heroine in the first book).

Although this book is marketed as a romance it's really not. As a romance novel this book isn't very good at all. There's very little interaction between Leigh and Damien and although you do learn a bit about Damien's past I never really felt like I knew him, or that Leigh knew him either. You do get the impression that they have feelings for each other but never that it's anything more than lust.

However, if you take this novel as just a paranormal, werewolf novel it's excellent. A very enjoyable read.
I haven't read many werewolf novels so I can't comment on the originality of the plot but I thought that it was very well done. The storyline will keep you gripped throughout, constantly leaving you wanting to know what's going to happen next and wanting to solve the many mysteries in the book. By the end of the book Handeland has adequately explained what has happend, she's given you all of the answers to the mysteries throughout the book and still leaves you wanting to read the next book.
I think the main strength of the plot is that it's clever without being overly complicated. She seems to have really researched her legends and added a bit of history in there too. I thought that this made it all seem a little bit more believable.
I'm trying to remain as vague as possible about the plot because I really think it's one of those books that could be ruined if you know what's going to happen. The twists in the plot, and the surprises in Leigh's history are part of what make this such a gripping and enjoyable read.

Jessie and Will, the main characters from the first book, feature very heavily in this book. At times I thought they featured a bit too heavily. It was supposed to be Leigh's book, they'd already had theirs and they were in this book as much as Leigh was and more than Damien! It was nice to see them still happy together but Handeland could have easily illustrated this without dedicating so much of the book to them.

I did like the interaction between Jessie and Leigh. I loved the way that their friendship and respect for each other develooped. In many ways this was the real love story of the book. At the beginning of the book Leigh has no friends, all she lives for is the hunt and then sudenly there's Jessie, a woman who is in every way her equal, who she can respect and reluctantly begin to like.

This book was very enjoyable. Perhaps a little disappointing in terms of romance but the plot and character development more than make up for that.

Summary: An enjoyable paranormal novel.