Review | Hunted by Darcy Coates

Eileen Hershberger disappears while hiking in the dense Ashlough Forest. The police stops searching after a few days and Eileen is presumed dead. Unable to accept the fact, Eileen’s brother, Chris and his three friends decide to look for Eileen themselves. Ignoring the advice of police officer Carla Delago, they enter the forest fully expecting that nature will be their biggest challenge. But the forest is the home of many things, and they may be walking right into a trap.

Some small animal skittered past her, disturbing dead leaves as it ran. She stumbled away from it as her heart lurched. Behind her, a slow, scraping noise echoed between the trees.

As a full-time city girl, the idea of camping overnight in a forest is completely foreign. Why would you voluntarily be in a place with no plumbing! That said, in the rare occasions that I have gone hiking, I can appreciate the idea of being at peace with nature. It’s a completely different world and can make you feel very small. So the idea of being lost in a forest is terrifying to me. In that sense, Hunted is effective. The writing is visceral, everything from crawling bugs to rotting meat is described in detail.

Where the book fails is when it spirals from a potentially creepy haunting into an ordinary human drama. There are many instances of scenes stretching credulity which takes me out of the story. The group of four main characters come across as archetypes than actual human beings. We also spend time with a character who is unlikable, only to have everyone acting as if he’s great when they mentioned him later. I don’t understand why he had to be in the story other than to add yet another obstacle for the group. I wish the author had trusted the forest and its elements for the horror rather than relying on external factors to bring on the scares.

Overall, Hunted is a fast-moving thriller that starts out great but falters at the end.

About the author: Darcy Coates

Photo by Paul Gilmore