Review: Hunted by LaBrie James

Author LaBrie James plunges readers into a tangled nightmare in her gripping debut novel, Hunted, a character-driven dive into dark family drama and deadly small-town secrets.

Stalked by a vengeful shadow, one with a face eerily resembling the chief of police, Lennox Rose is slowly recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a horrific attack, but that brutal night in the snow is only the beginning. After watching her best friend violated and killed, Lennox is shattered both physically and mentally, and has to somehow find a way to rebuild herself.

Finn Holland is the young officer assigned to the case who first responded to the scene, while Jaxon is the hunky lynchpin of the plot, boyfriend to the murdered Juliet, and in a secret relationship with the survivor. Romantic triangles abound, as the full picture of Juliet and Lenny’s lives comes into painful focus. Determined to never be helpless again, Lenny complicates the relationship of victim and investigator, even as the villain circles just out of sight.

Lennox’s grief and confusion are deep and believable, as is her friend Cory’s simmering obsession, and Finn’s instantaneous attraction. The author skillfully captures the emotional complexity of young love and lust, even though several years separate some of the characters, which adds a taboo edge to the suspense. Thematically, this novel doesn’t shy away from hard subjects of betrayal, loss, weakness, trauma bonding, forgiveness, and more. Though they are supposed to be in high school, the demons these characters wrestle with are ageless and relevant to a much broader range than YA readers.

The authenticity of the story is unfortunately lacking in other places, particularly when it comes to the behavior of the investigators. From the very first chapter, police officers violate protocol in major ways, oversharing details of the case with people of interest and victims alike. While this makes for juicy tension, given how smitten Finn is with Lennox, it can seem clunky and overly convenient for moving the plot along. The shifts in narrative perspective provide readers with a comprehensive view of the players, and deep insight to Lennox and Finn, but this intimacy also spoon-feeds readers certain conclusions and revelations of the mystery, as well as emotional layers of the main characters. The straightforward simplicity of the internal monologuing acts as a valve that releases the tension as readily as the author creates it.

The prose is largely driven by raw emotion and the story moves quickly, but the execution could be improved as well. The writing stumbles in terms of grammar (“your” vs “you’re”) and fluidity of thought, as though a final proofread was never done to catch word redundancy, awkward phrasing, or missing prepositions, among other issues. The language also leans on predictable descriptions too often; the characters can feel flat and unremarkable, given how superficially they are repeatedly described.

These technical errors are hard to ignore, but they don’t overshadow the richly twisted plot, dark thematic consistency, or the ominous sense of betrayal that permeates this unpredictable mystery.