I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did, and I would like to blame the Tragic Backstory trope for that.

Heartless Hunter is one of the select few romantasy books that I enjoyed. Maybe it was the spying and the subterfuge, or maybe it was my curiosity as to Gideon's backstory, but I read 75% of it in one day. I thought the worldbuilding was cool (I'm always a fan of blood magic) and I also loved the "post-revolution" type story.
The story follows two POVs - a witch's and a witchunter's. Rune is a witch trying to smuggle other illegal witches out of the country and Gideon is a witchhunting soldier bent on catching the Crimson Moth (who is Rune). There's a lot of politics and fake courting with ulterior motives. I did manage to call one of the plot twists immediately (my first annotation for one character is "either they're not trustworthy or they're going to die"...and both were right). I called the other one right before it happened, but both of them were extremely well done.
I don't know that either of the main characters really stood out to me personality-wise. They reminded me a bit of Nina and Matthias from Six of Crows. Surprisingly enough, I preferred Gideon over Alex, I think mainly because of Gideon's Tragic Backstory. None of the other side characters really stood out to me because they were all relatively shallow.
Romantasy fans will not want to miss out on the fast-paced, enemies-to-lovers story that is Heartless Hunter.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC!
4/5