On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.

Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can’t help but find herself falling for.

Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?

Kristen Ciccarelli’s Heartless Hunter is the thrilling start to The Crimson Moth duology, a romantic fantasy series where the only thing more treacherous than being a witch…is falling in love.

Heartless Hunter, Kristen Ciccarelli
Pub Date: 20 February 2024

Just in time for Valentine’s Day?

Perhaps.

Heartless Hunter just jumps right in. Immediately we are desperate for Rune to rescue her target and evade capture by the Blood Guard. And then the action never stops.

Which has both good and bad merits to it: I love a good fast paced story, but I feel like toward the end when plot and reason needed to catch up that we were forced to ignore other telling signs until it was too late.

The back copy, as you may have read above, spoils the relationship for you, which it didn’t need to because Rune and Gideon’s enemies to lovers arc can be seen from space.

Watching both Rune and Gideon play off of each other, both somehow knowing the other was hunting them and also convincing themselves that wasn’t true was funny, satisfying, and at times incredibly frustrating (in the shaking-my-book-in-the-middle-of-the-night-about-why-these-two-don’t-see-what-I-see sort of way).

I didn’t feel the need to push through Heartless Hunter, since every scene had a point, purpose, and action, but when things began to wrap up, they did so in a way that didn’t feel right. Characters learned new secrets but ignored them to focus on the romantasy aspects of the plot, and other reveals weren’t set up well throughout the plot like they had been dropped in the ending act.

I did enjoy the read, however, and do recommend you go pick it up.

Especially if you like to text your friends at 4am to complain about characters.