In a land far, far away, there lived a boy, burdened with a curse, in a tiny village where everyone despised him… until he found people that valued him.

This story had such a nice fairytale vibe to it that I could excuse some of the clunky dialogues at the beginning. This luckily evens out very fast, and you end up with a fairly flowy writing style.

Once upon a time, the cursed boy met another boy, someone who looked at him differently. But that didn't help the wrath of the villagers that hated him…. And who had really interesting second names.

If you know German, you will notice how a lot of the side characters will be referred to only by their second name, which is always the German word for their occupation, which felt very hilarious at times. Aside from those stylistic choices, I enjoyed the found family aspect of this story a lot, even if it takes almost half the book to finally meet them.

And they lived happily ever after… or did they? 
At the end of this story, I was left with a lot of unanswered questions, like:

How does Wendell's curse actually work?

What is up with Jacques past? (They moved on way too quickly from one very, very important realization.)

But most importantly:

What now?

With the open-endedness of this story, it feels like there could follow a second book, but I have found nothing of the sort.

Regardless, „Deerstalker“ is a very atmospheric fairy tale with a hint of romance but a lot of found family that is worth reading if you can look past some unwieldy dialogue and an uncertain ending with unresolved questions.

Thanks to NetGalley and Indigo River Publishing for providing me with this ARC in return for an honest review.