I am a fan of a good, simple cover sometimes. The Wickerlight cover matches in style, if not color. The twist was able to move this book into a solid 3 star book for me. I picked it up because I was approved for the sequel, The Wickerlight, on Netgalley and I really do NOT like to DNF books.

I felt more convinced after that that The Wren Hunt was worth my time reading.

I will say, this book had a magnificent plot twist towards the end that I DID NOT see coming in the slightest. In a war between augurs and judges, no one plays fair. I spent most of the book internally yelling at Wren for her actions, and frankly I did the same for most of the supporting characters as well. Even the seemingly great characters end up being terrible, and the MC is no better. If you like a book where the characters are likable and have redeeming qualities, this book will not fulfill that desire. Also, I feel like I never got a good explanation for why this happened EVERY YEAR on the same day. Apparently the only reason this occurs is because her name is Wren and they must hunt the Wren. The book starts of with Wren being chased through the woods by a group of young judges, which apparently happens every year. I spent most of it very confused, and am actually still pretty confused. Wren must tip the scales back into the augurs favor before it is too late, or does the universe have a different plan in store for her? The two sides are constantly at war, and the judges are winning. Judges are able to commune with nature and augurs have different abilities centered around understanding patterns and being able to manipulate the world around them. Set in Ireland, The Wren Hunt posits two gifted groups judges and augurs. The Wren Hunt is the start of a duology following Wren, a young augur about to take an internship wit a house of judges, in order to try and steal a map from them. But the small things added up over time, until eventually they formed one big thing that could crush you beneath its weight. There were always consequences, usually teeny tiny consequences that you hardly noticed. There would be consequences, I knew that. Caught in a web of deceit, Wren must decide whether or not to gamble on the spell and seal the Augurs’ fate. Cassa has spent her life researching a transformative spell, which could bring the war between the factions to its absolute end. In a desperate bid to save her family, Wren takes a dangerous undercover assignment-as an intern to an influential Judge named Cassa Harkness. But now that power lies with the Judges, who are set on destroying her kind for good. Once her people, the Augurs, controlled a powerful magic. Every Christmas, Wren is chased through the woods near her isolated village by her family’s enemies-the Judges-and there’s nothing that she can do to stop it.

The wren hunt