ACascadeofBooks

Title: The Hunt

Author: Andrew Fukuda

Published: May 8th 2012

Publisher: St Martin's Griffin

Pages: 293

Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal

Series: The Hunt #1

Rating: 4.5/5

Don’t Sweat.  Don’t Laugh.  Don’t draw attention to yourself.  And most of all, whatever you do, do not fall in love with one of them.
Gene is different from everyone else around him.  He can’t run with lightning speed, sunlight doesn’t hurt him and he doesn’t have an unquenchable lust for blood.  Gene is a human, and he knows the rules.  Keep the truth a secret.  It’s the only way to stay alive in a world of night—a world where humans are considered a delicacy and hunted for their blood.
When he’s chosen for a once in a lifetime opportunity to hunt the last remaining humans, Gene’s carefully constructed life begins to crumble around him.  He’s thrust into the path of a girl who makes him feel things he never thought possible—and into a ruthless pack of hunters whose suspicions about his true nature are growing. Now that Gene has finally found something worth fighting for, his need to survive is stronger than ever—but is it worth the cost of his humanity?-Goodreads I bought this book from The Book People on a whim, after reading the description, even though I had never heard of it before. I love that moment, when you find a little known book that turns out to be an absolute cracker! This definitely happened to me with The Hunt.

The plot to this novel revolves around a boy called Gene, who is a human trying to blend in to a world overrun by vampires. Not your Twilight sparkly vampires but your blood-sucking evil vampires!! Suddenly he finds himself a winner of a once in a lifetime chance to hunt the last remaining humans with a small group of vampires.

The plot is very fast paced, I was so nervous for Gene the whole way through the novel, and the tension the author creates when Gene is pretending to be human made me literally sweat with nerves myself!

The only thing that stopped this novel from getting 5 stars was the ending, it didn't really seem to have an ending at all. It didn't have a cliffhanger either, it just sort-of ended, rather abruptly.

The main character in this novel is Gene, and the story is told from his point of view. It's rare (for me anyway) to find a YA novel that's narrated by a male protagonist, but I really enjoy them! Gene was clever to survive among the vampires for so long, he was also brave and caring.

Ashley June is the "love interest" in this novel and I really liked her character as well. She begins the novel as quite snooty and dislikeable, but her development throughout the book meant by the end of the novel I had warmed to her considerably.

The other minor characters in the book were pretty good, the diverse group that were the other contestants in the hunt and the humans that they were hunting.

Overall I really enjoyed this novel, and I have the second book, which I'm really looking forward to reading!