The Hunting Moon: Review
By Sioph LealThe Hunting Moon is Susan Dennard’s sequel to The Luminaries and follows Winnie Wednesday, a girl who was shunned from The Luminaries along with the rest of her family for the crimes of her father, or so she believed. After passing the deadly hunter trails, Winnie and her family are welcomed back, and Winnie inadvertently becomes a local celebrity but faces a dangerous new nightmare named The Whisper. The nightmare threatens everyone in Hemlock Falls, and Winnie must save the day and solve her father’s clues about his apparent framing. As bodies and secrets accumulate, Winnie grapples with the challenges of being a true Wednesday and Luminary, in addition to the true cost of fighting the nightmares of the forest.
Similarly to the first book, The Hunting Moon has a decent pace to it, but the story moves a lot faster in the later part of the book. The first half shows Winnie dealing with the struggle of suddenly becoming important to people within Hemlock Falls. No longer ostracized because of her bravery in her hunter trials, Winnie has gotten everything she ever dreamed of. Her mother is welcomed into the Wednesday clan, her brother’s career is back on track, and she now has friends. While it is interesting to see Winnie grapple with the fact that she still feels as if she is missing something, the first half of the book lacked the complexity or adrenaline that the second half offered. The book is stronger when it focuses on the mystery of Winnie’s father, the new complexities of the nightmares within the forest. Winnie will learn that not all nightmares can be dangerous, just like not all hunters need to follow their clan’s code as closely as she once believed.
This book fits perfectly into the young adult category, but having the main character question layered issues such as the cost of being a hunter, how death is entwined in their lives and how Winnie begins to see the complexities of the world. She no longer sees the black-and-white fame and glory of the hunter's lives but rather the cost of the hunt in blood and heartache, something that echoes through Winnie’s ambiguous loss in regard to her father, a man she adored but had come to hate in those four years she was an outcast. Having Winnie question and feel these things elevates it from just a young adult novel to something a mature reader could enjoy.
There are many interesting dynamics in the second book of the series, but the romantic subplot is not one of them. It diverts from the complexity of the world, and while it can be argued that this is a staple of the genre, the emotionally tortured guitar player, who is both aloof outside and popular, feels reductive to an otherwise interesting plot. Other characters grow and develop, but the tortured musician doesn’t show that until roughly 210 pages in. Focusing more on Erica, the protagonist's former best friend, would have been a stronger story that wouldn’t have disrupted the pacing.
The first book had tension when Winnie faced her hunter trials with everything stacked against her, and this book is more of a supernatural detective novel that Dennard transitions to seamlessly while maintaining everything good about the first book. Dennard is brilliant at capturing the tension and anxiety in the forest, especially when the mist and nightmares arise.
The Hunting Moon is a successful follow-up to The Luminaries, adding a new outlook on the world of Hemlock Falls and even the nightmare residences of the forest. The second half of the book grips you that remains even with the sporadic and unnecessary romantic subplot.
The Hunting Moon released on November 07th 2023.