Hollow

Every fifty years, the Great Hunt sends champions into the cursed forest called the Taking Trees. Their goal is a boon from the Great Elm. The forest has spread for generations and swallows the land around the mortal villages, so the Hunt is humanity's best remaining chance of ending the curse.

Ferris Creed is a bookish mortal with no magic and no combat training. Years ago the forest took her sister Rissa as an Offering, and Rissa is presumed dead. Ferris signs up for the Hunt regardless, since the boon is the only way she might bring her sister back.

Among the trees she has to get past dangerous spirits and rival champions. Along the way she meets Hendrix Draven, a Fae warrior whose past is murky and who is chasing vengeance of his own. He hunts the same spirits she fears, and he realises she would make useful bait.

Hollow is a dark romantasy told in alternating points of view, Ferris's and Hendrix's. It is the first book of the Crown of Hearts & Chaos duology, by the authors of Zodiac Academy. Expect a perilous setting, an unlikely and uneasy pairing, and a heroine who is outmatched from the first page.