I just finished reading Heartless Hunter, and I have to confess—by the final chapters, I was a complete mess and I’m not even going to pretend I kept it together.
I was reading along, fully immersed, when the emotions hit like a freight train. One moment I’m flipping pages, the next I’m ugly crying so hard I had to switch to the audiobook. My poor hardcover was in danger of becoming a biohazard—DNA smudged into every page from tears and sniffles. Honestly, I couldn’t see the words anymore anyway. Blurry-eyed sobbing is not ideal for reading comprehension.
But I think that’s the mark of a truly powerful story: when it reaches in, grabs hold of your heart, and squeezes. Gently at first. Then, mercilessly.
Two relationships in the book pierced me straight through:
1. Rune and Alex.
Sometimes, we’re so close to someone that we stop really seeing them. We fill in blanks with what we want to believe. We excuse, we blur, we trust, even when something doesn’t quite feel right. Their story made me ache in that quiet, familiar way—the kind of ache you don’t always talk about, but definitely feel. Rune and Alex’s connection reminded me of how heartbreakingly easy it is to lose ourselves in someone else’s shadow.
2. Rune and Gideon.
On the surface: enemies. But beneath that? Two souls carved from similar storms, with so many shared wounds and hidden truths. It made me wonder how often we draw lines in the sand without realizing we’re standing on the same side of it. Maybe we have more in common with the people we resist than we want to admit. Maybe there’s power in realizing that connection can come from the most unexpected corners. Sometimes, the person we think we should fear or despise is the only one who truly understands us.
Heartless Hunter wasn’t just a fantasy escape for me—it was a glimmer that cracked something open. One of those unexpected emotional detonations that shakes loose something in your own life. I didn’t expect to cry. I didn’t expect to pause, mid-sniffle, and whisper, “Oof. That feels real.” And those are the best kinds of stories, aren’t they? The ones that sneak into your heart while you’re busy thinking it’s just another fantasy novel.
But it did.
And as a wallflower who’s spent a lifetime watching quietly from the edges, I’m always moved when a book not only invites me into its world—but nudges me gently to reflect on my own.
– The Wallflower
Glimmers of The Wallflower 
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