The Hawk and the Hound is the first novel in the Hanging Rock series by Emily Fionn.
Finished on: 18.4.2023
[I won this book in a LibraryThing Early Reviewer give-away.]

Plot:
Rayne left her hometown Glenbrook many years ago, but now her granny is dying and she has to return home. Her grandmosther is the leader of the local coven, and the question of who will succeed her haunts the family. Rayne has always been the one to be favored for the role but she really doesn’t want to take on the responsibility, which her sister and her mother view very critically. To make matters more complicated still, Rayne gets drawn into the old rivalry between Glenbrook and the neighboring town Dodson, said to have been cursed by the Glenbrook witches. When she has a car accident and is brought to the Dodson hospital by the mechanic Theo, the fate of Glenbrook and Dodson becomes not only a matter of supernatural politics but also love.

The Hawk and the Hound has many interesting ideas but I found the execution rather flawed. My inner editor kept creeping out and trying to make corrections which is abvoe all a sign that I just wasn’t as into the story as I would have liked to be.

The Hawk and the Hound is not a bad read. There are many things to like about it with its intricate world-building and nice characters. But to me it read less like a finished book and more like an early draft. The pacing of the narrative was off, some things happening way too fast – like the romance. That is a common complaint on my side, I’m just not a head-over-heels-at-first-glance kind of girl, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seemed particularly fast here. I also found the revelations about the past partly a little confusing and I’m not sure I correctly pieced together what actually happened.

Generally, the information management about the world and how it worked was a little uneven with things apparently assumed knowledge (although it is definitely the first book in the series. I think it is Fionn’s first book, period) that I definitely hadn’t heard about before. Sometimes there would come a moment later on that would explain earlier comments to me, which is fine – not everything needs to be understood at the first moment. But sometimes I just felt like the book assumed that everybody would know that was how things worked, no need to explain. But in dealing with a fantasy world, there is not one way to do it.

With all that going on, it speaks to the strengths of the story and the book that I was still interested in what happened and was able to still enjoy reading it for the most part. But there is a book buried in it that is actually good, and it’s kind of sad that we only got this messy take on it.

Summarizing: okay.