Every Christmas, Wren is chased through the woods by her family’s enemies—the Judges—and there’s nothing that she can do to stop it. Once the Augurs controlled a powerful magic. But now that power lies with the Judges, who are set on destroying her kind for good. In a bid to save her family, Wren takes a dangerous undercover assignment—as an intern to an influential Judge named Cassa Harkness. Cassa has spent her life researching a transformative spell, which could bring the war between the factions to its absolute end. Caught in a web of deceit, Wren must decide whether or not to gamble on the spell and seal the Augurs’ fate.
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The Wren Hunt
Mary Watson
We’re thrown straight into this book as we follow Wren as she’s literally hunted by a group of boys on St Stephens day. This is supposed to be symbolic as the judges will ‘hunt’ the augurs, but I still don’t really understand how a group of boys could hunt a girl every year? Surely the parents would say something, or the people in the small town who most likely all know each other? I get that it ties into the druid’s Wren bird, and it’s about Wren day and etc but it doesn’t seem plausible that it could be a yearly occurrence in our time.
It’s set in Ireland which means there’s Nemetons and druids and lots of local based folklore and myth. This is something I live for, as I love the small local myths from Ireland, Wales and Scotland (as they also feel a lot more close to home). Even though there’s very minimal ‘magic’ within this book, it is an extremely magical read.
My main issue was that in general the pacing of the book was slow. It was beautifully written but it just never created that tension and drive to read on to the finale of the book. We spent a lot of time learning about the different aspects of being an augur and about Wren and extended family, but there’s very little action within the plot.
Our narrator, Wren, is found to be quite unreliable as she doesn’t fully understand everything that is being planned around her. She only really knows what she’s been directly told or what she’s picked up along the way. This meant that the plot twist was made even better, because as a reader you don’t quite see it coming.
POSITIVES
+ Set in Ireland & Irish myth/folklore
+ Plot twist
NEGATIVES
– Slow pacing
– Significance of the titular ‘Wren Hunt’
I received The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review