This is my first book for the Canadian Book Challenge, and I’ve been meaning to read it for a very long time. O.R. Melling was born in Ireland, but raised in Canada, and as I’ve been wanting to read more Canadian YA books, as well as the fact that Sabrina recommended it again and again, I thought this challenge was the perfect time to pick up The Hunter’s Moon.

Gwen is visiting Ireland for the summer to go exploring the country with her cousin Findabhair. The two plan to explore all sorts of places mentioned in Irish mythology, and decide to spend one night in a Sidhe-Mound. When Gwen wakes up the next morning, it’s to find that Findabhair has been magicked away by the fairies. Thus starts Gwen’s quest to free her cousin from the fairies that have kidnapped her.

It was all very well to set out on a quest for things unimaginable, fantastical and unknown. It was quite a different matter to encounter them. Only now did Gwen realize that she hadn’t really believed in the existence of another world. It had all been in the realm of the imagination. Till now.
“She’s been stolen by the fairies.”
The words issued from her mouth like mist on her breath, quivering with incredulity.
“What am I going to do?” she wailed.

I think Gwen may be one of my new favourite YA characters. She’s charming without realizing that she is. She’s a little awkward, and she struggles with body image. She’s more real than a lot of characters in books, which contrasted so nicely with the fact that there are fairies and leprechauns and Excalibur in the story. (And we all know that any book that mentions Excalibur gets cool points.)

I loved Melling’s Faërie – it was so real, and exactly as one would picture it. Definitely made me want to go for a visit, even though we all know that would only be looking for trouble.

I picked up a used copy of this book, lucky for me. A while back, Sabrina posted about how, when this book was rereleased, Melling made the main character American instead of Canadian. From a marketing perspective, I suppose I can understand why – she wanted this to appeal to the American market, but it is still disappointing that she would feel she needs to make that change. And it may seem insignificant to some people, but to me it just feels like something like that would completely change a character. I don’t know if there were any other changes made with the rerelease, but I think that one is enough to make me happy that I got an older copy of the book. I’m definitely going to be looking for used copies of the other books in the series too, in order to read it how they were originally published. It may mean that it will take much longer to get through the series than I want to, but I think it will be worth it.