Heartless Hunter

Heartless Hunter makes flirting feel like the least reliable form of evidence in the room.

Everyone here is observing everyone else, and almost nobody is seeing clearly. I loved that arrangement from the start. Kristen Ciccarelli gives Rune a public self designed to be dismissed and gives Gideon a reason to study her anyway. Their courtship is a contest over interpretation: which glance is sincere, which question is a trap, which version of a person is safe to believe. I was invested in the romance because each character had something more important than a date to lose.

The book made me impatient in a productive way. I wanted one of them to be clever enough to win, then wanted both of them to stop playing long enough to notice what winning would cost. That is a better reading experience than waiting for a reveal I have already guessed. Ciccarelli sometimes relies on convenient timing to keep the game going, but she understands that suspense can come from two people interpreting the same encounter in opposite ways.

The premise (no spoilers past Rune and Gideon's decision to court)

After a violent revolution, witches in the republic are hunted instead of ruling. Rune Winters hides her own magic behind the performance of a shallow socialite. At night she becomes the Crimson Moth, rescuing other witches from the purge. When a rescue fails, she decides that courting the formidable witch hunter Gideon Sharpe could divert suspicion and yield information. Gideon, meanwhile, suspects a connection between Rune and the Moth and courts her to investigate. Neither starts with honest intentions; both have reasons to fear what the other might discover.

Published in 2024, Heartless Hunter is the first book in Ciccarelli's Crimson Moth duology. It is marketed as YA, a label worth reading alongside its mature content rather than as a promise of gentleness. The early world is all public splendour and private terror. Rune's position lets her move in society while concealing the work that matters to her. Gideon's position lets him enter those same rooms with the authority to destroy what she protects.

What works

The socialite disguise is a fine piece of character design. Rune is not invisible; she is highly visible in a way that makes people underestimate her. That is more flexible than a hood and a secret name. Every public appearance can serve two purposes: keeping her cover intact and testing who has begun to doubt it. Ciccarelli makes her apparent frivolity active labour. I am always glad when a pretty dress has a tactical use, if only to justify the laundry bill.

The alternating Rune and Gideon perspectives are equally important. A single point of view would let one side of the courtship remain a simple mystery. Here we can watch two people build plausible but incomplete accounts of each other. That makes their mistakes understandable without making them harmless. Gideon sees a social class he resents and may miss the woman inside the performance. Rune sees the hunter who endangers her and has to judge whether there is more to him than his badge. Their attraction grows inside those errors, which gives it shape.

I also admire the choice to make the conflict political before it is romantic. Gideon does not hunt witches as a charming hobby. Rune does not rescue them to make herself more interesting to him. Their public roles produce real danger, so the flirtation cannot dissolve the argument. In the better passages, a bit of tenderness sharpens the moral problem rather than offering an escape from it. The book makes it possible to understand why someone might be drawn to Gideon without asking us to forget what he does.

The pace has bite. Ciccarelli moves between social performance and pursuit without letting either half become a separate novel. The drawing rooms matter because information travels through them; the danger matters because it follows people back into the drawing rooms. I liked that the book keeps making an apparently polite encounter feel one question away from catastrophe. It has the manners of a reception and the pulse of an interrogation.

What's polarising

The cat and mouse pattern needs both participants to miss clues at useful moments. I could accept much of that because each has an emotional reason to misread the other. There are still turns where suspicion seems to retreat just long enough for the next social engagement. The suspense then feels arranged rather than inevitable. If you need an investigation to be watertight, keep a pencil handy. You will find a few leaks.

Gideon is the more difficult sell, and he should be. A hunter loyal to a regime that purges witches carries an ethical weight the book cannot erase with a wounded look. Ciccarelli gives him reasons for his beliefs and enough interior life to resist caricature. At times, though, the romance advances faster than his reckoning with the harm attached to his role. I can be interested in the man and still refuse to let interest do the argument for him. The difference is where the book's bite lives.

The YA pace also favours quick emotional shifts over long institutional scrutiny. I wanted more room to understand how this republic sustains its violence beyond the immediate hunt. That is partly a compliment to the setup: the premise suggests a rich political novel as well as a romantic thriller. This one chooses the thriller's speed. Readers who want a fully worked history of the revolution may feel the gaps more keenly than I did.

The Gideon of it

Gideon Sharpe is most compelling as a man who has become very good at a terrible job. The book asks us to hold his suspicion and his vulnerability together without letting one cancel the other. He can read a room, pursue an enemy and still be wrong about the person directly in front of him. I like that as a character problem. I am less convinced whenever his private gentleness seems close to being treated as sufficient evidence of moral change.

Rune's resistance keeps him interesting. She has no reason to grant him the benefit of his own story, and the romance is stronger when he has to contend with that. Their mutual pretence gives both of them power in one scene and exposes them in the next. If Gideon were only a threat, the book would be simpler. If he were only a misunderstood suitor, it would be duller. Ciccarelli wisely lets him remain inconvenient.

Spice and heat

Heat: 3 of 5, with a brief on-page intimate encounter. The book is marketed as YA, but it is not a no spice title. Rune is eighteen, and independent content guidance confirms that the encounter goes beyond a fade to black. The larger emphasis is still on romantic tension and divided loyalties. Content notes: the purge includes executions and bloody violence; Gideon's past includes coercion and substance abuse. Treat the teen label and the heat rating as separate facts when deciding whom to hand this to.

Who it's for

Read Heartless Hunter if you enjoy a disguise that changes the meaning of every conversation and a love interest whose profession gives you excellent reasons to distrust him. You will have fun if you like suspense conducted in polite company and can tolerate a few investigative blind spots. You may spend much of the book wanting to confiscate both leads' invitations. I did, then turned the next page before deciding what to do with them.

Books like Heartless Hunter

• Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin, for another witch and witch hunter caught in a romance with hostile institutions around them.
• Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross, for YA rivals whose affection has to survive a larger conflict.
• The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten, for secret power, courtly danger and a woman navigating who is allowed to know what she can do.

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