Every Christmas, Wren is hunted down by the village boys. It’s a very unfestive tradition, a ritual that has become increasingly more brutal with each passing year. And now the boy who captured her has done something even more disturbing – in cutting off a lock of her hair as a trophy, he has symbolically marked Wren for the kill.
Wren is part of an Augur family, and Augur’s used to be magically powerful until the Judges arrived, stole their magical power sources, and attempted to destroy them. Now it finally looks as if the Judges might have succeeded. For Wren and her kin, there is only one hope. She must infiltrate the house of the most powerful Judge of them all, the enigmatic Cassa Harkness, and steal back the secrets her enemies took from them. But even though Wren’s powers give her some kind of obscure foresight, she has no clue that she is being led towards her own sacrifice…
Fans of folk magic, The Wicker Man and terrifically twisty-and-turny YA mysteries will love Mary Watson’s The Wren Hunt. With its roots winding deep into the soil of Celtic mythology, and a first-person heroine who literally sprints onto page one and never stops running, it’s a compelling and bewitching read that pulls out surprises when you least expect them and has a set of intriguing, and very real, relationships at its core. This is a story that unravels in the very best way – from the moment Wren is chosen to enter the lions den of Harkness House, everything she thought she believed is questioned and threatened: who can she really trust, and even if she finds what she is looking for will it be enough to save her Augur brethren? And what about her long-disappeared mother, who Wren envisions being torn apart on a sacrificial buffet table? As violence between the Augurs and the blood-thirsty Judges escalates, and as Wren’s attraction towards one of her deadliest enemies grows, the story swerves into a beautifully realised third-act conclusion that shouldn’t be a surprise to fans of the folk horror genre but still comes satisfyingly out of left-field. As a YA crossover that adult readers should enjoy just as much as its target audience, this is very fine work indeed.
THE WREN HUNT / AUTHOR: MARY WATSON / PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 8TH
