Review: Taken By The Huntsman by Mistral Dawn

Book Description:

Discarded and ignored by those around her for most of her life, Cassie is a lonely human woman struggling to find her place in the world and meaning in her life. Cadeyrn is the Erlking, the leader of the Wild Hunt, a hundreds of thousands of years old Fae who has always known his purpose. He has spent his entire long existence tracking the criminals of Fairie and punishing them for their crimes. 

While hunting for the murderer of a child who has escaped to Earth Cadeyrn comes across Cassie and realizes that she is the one that the great mother goddess has designated as his soul mate. He kidnaps her and takes her to his fortress in Fairie to protect her from his many enemies. 

He knows she will be angry and that he'll have to work to earn her trust, but he finds his task to be even more challenging than he had thought it would be due to Cassie's difficulty in opening her heart. 

Will Cadeyrn be able to convince Cassie that the bond between them is real and earn her love?

My Review:

I don't read a lot of fantasy romance or romance with a fae theme but I'm glad I went with my gut with this one and decided to get it to read. 

Cassie just wants to help others and she thought she found a way to do that with her recent job but her boss let her know that she isn't there to help others. No, she's there to get the people calling, on and off the phone as fast as possible without making them mad. Not really what she was wanting to do, so we find out that Cassie is a very caring person right from the very beginning of the book. 

Cadeyrn is the Erlking and leader of the wild hunt. He's very old but doesn't look it and has waited hundreds of thousands of years to find his destined mate. So when he spots Cassie and just knows that she is his destined mate, he does the only thing he can to keep her safe. He kidnaps her and brings her to his home in Fairie. 

Cadeyrn is on the hunt for a fae that killed a child so he can't stop to take his time with Cassie right now. So he puts a sleep spell on her and hopes that she will sleep until he can come back to explain why he felt the need to bring her to his home in order to keep her safe. Right away we find out that Cassie is in danger from Cadeyrn's enemies and he had a good reason to make sure she is safe but she is kidnapped by one of his enemies and subsequently rescued by an interesting character. 

I really liked how Cassie took all of her new surroundings so well. Some of the people she met would have scared most anyone who came face to face with them but she handled it all pretty well. 

Cadeyrn had me on his side as soon as he went to Cassie's home and gathered her belongings as well as her cat and brought them back to his home so she would feel more comfortable. He is such a perfect hero. He wanted nothing more than to give her whatever she wanted and when they finally got together and he brought about the idea of a little D/s fun as well as a little bondage...well he won me over for sure. I have nothing at all bad to say about this hero. 

The author did a fantastic job of giving us enough back story, history and a look around Fairie that I was easily able to follow the story and it made sense to me. I was pleasantly surprised by this book and even more surprised after reading it to find out that this is the author's very first book. 

My only complaint is that the beginning of the book was a little slow to start but it picked up quickly and I had no problem reading this book in one sitting as it kept my attention the rest of the way through. I also have to make a mention of this terrific cover. It fits this book perfectly and I love that Cassie's cat is prominent because he was a large part of the story and I loved that. 

If you like fairies, fae, goblins, harpies, a fantastic romance with a little D/s thrown in for fun then this is a book for you. 

If this sounds good to you and you'd like to read it for yourself, you can purchase it here. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars