Four stars: A thrilling reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood. A smart girl surviving alone in the woods in a post apocalyptic world.

Red is determined to make it to her grandma’s house. That means being smart and outwitting all those who are out to harm a lone woman trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world. A few months ago, Red was living a quiet life in a small mountain community with her parents. Her biggest worry was looking after her parents while attending college. Then disaster strikes when a mysterious virus sweeps through the population killing millions. Everyone flees to quarantine camps, but not Red. She has seen enough apocalypse movies and read enough end of the world books to know better. Red calculates how she can save herself and her family from the virus and the marauders left who are out to harm. Soon Red is alone in the woods, a place filled with men posing as wolves and other dangers. Can Red make it to Grandma’s?
What I Liked:
*I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this one, but what I got was one heck of a read. This is a imaginative retelling of the classic Red Riding Hood Tale, but this isn’t a children’s story. Red finds herself in a world decimated by a deadly virus. A lone woman in the woods battling to survive. This is smart, sophisticated and terrifying. I ate this one up!
*Red is the shining star of this book. I loved her fierce nature and that she was smart, capable and brave. Red has spent her entire life reading horror movies and watching apocalyptic films, so she likes to think she is prepared. She is always calculating her next move. I loved that she was always referencing mistakes people made in the books and movies she watched. I also loved that she never let her physical limitations hold her back, and that she was determined to survive no matter the cost. Red is an unforgettable character. Loved her!
*The reader is thrown into this apocalyptic world along with Red. I liked that information was scarce, and that the reader was just as blind as Red. All Red knows is that some sort of deadly virus spread killings hundreds of thousands, and then the tv and radio went silent and no further information was available. This world is deadly and scary. The author did a great job with the world building. I enjoyed being thrown into this frightening world.
*There is never a dull moment in this one. Red moves from one terrible obstacle to the next. Add in the unknown factors such as some of the people had their organs torn from the inside out and you have a truly terrifying tale I loved the non stop action. It was riveting!
*The story moves forward and backward in time. In the past, the reader learns what happened to Red’s family and how she came to be alone in the woods. While in the present, Red is fighting to survive. I thought the movement back in forward in time added to the tension and suspense in the story!
*The ending is satisfying, and I was pleased with the outcome, even though I wanted way more to the story.
*January LaVoy narrates the audiobook, and I thought her work was outstanding. Her voices were spot on. I loved the audio version!
And The Not So Much:
*The final chapters of the story moved at lightning speed. So much happens, it felt like the author was in a big hurry. There is a big information dump after another harrowing encounter, and then a whole bunch is skipped over to get to the finale. I hated that I didn’t get to see the rest of the journey. Why the hurry? I thought this was a big fail! At least there wasn’t a cliffhanger.
*I was left with too many unanswered questions. I so wanted to learn about the source of the virus and the other thing that was killing people. Who created it and why? I also wanted to know more about the militia and the quarantine camps.
*This book is not for the faint of heart. There are plenty of chilling scenes as well as violence and blood.
The Girl in Red was a gripping read that does not let up. This is a page turner! I loved this innovative retelling of Red Riding Hood. The post apocalyptic world is truly terrifying! If you want a thrilling book this is not to be missed. My only gripe with this one was that it was not long enough and the end was hurried. I wanted more!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own, and I was not compensated for this review.
Posted@Rainy Day Ramblings.

I think the book has a lot of strong ideas. It combines multiple themes and manages to make an interesting story. This dystopian retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, follows Red, our heroine, as she travels through the woods on the way to her grandmother’s house. Time skips back and forth, every other chapter, answering readers questions about what happened to Red’s family and how the “Crisis” began to present day as she navigates the current, dangerous world full of wolves, both human and other, who would do her harm.

Red is a resourceful, smart heroine who takes no shit and isn’t afraid to do what is necessary to finish her journey safely. She set out to get to her grandmother’s house and nothing will stop her. Not a plague that has wiped out humanity, not her brother who doesn’t take anything seriously, not the military who wants to round her up and put her in a containment camp, not a prosthetic leg that aches, not villainous men out to rob and do even worse to her, nothing.

The Girl in Red was well-written, easy read. It's nothing truly amazing or spectacular but I enjoyed it. Would recommend.

First there was “The Cough” then civilization basically ended. In Christina Henry’s newest The Girl in Red, We meet Delia (Cordelia) or Red as she likes to be called.

Her name wasn’t really Red, of course. Christened Cordelia by her Shakespeare-loving mother, she only answered to Red. Her dad gave her that nickname, and once she heard it no one would get a response if they called her Delia.
Cordelia was her name, but Red was who she was



This isn’t your childhood Red Riding Hood though… Henry’s newest take on classic fairy tales takes us to a post-infection world where you either got the cough and died, or you are trying to survive. Trying to get to her grandmother’s house, Red finds out that there really are monsters out there in the woods. This won’t be an easy journey. Armed with what she can carry on her back and a hand axe, the several hundred mile foot journey won’t be easy.

When the cough came, so did the quarantine camps, the soldiers and the militia. Traveling alone is a scary thing in any time but even more so now.
There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.

Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....


This is my favorite so far of Ms. Henry’s fairy tale adaptations but I highly recommend them all!

Thank you to the publisher for granting me an early release copy of this title via NetGalley.

Christina Henry has of late shifted her focus onto darker retelling of fairy tales - Alice and Red Queen, The Mermaid - and we love the decidedly un-disney like interpretations of the fairy tales. Grim tales steeped in dark atmospheric settings that will have your heart palpably beating real-fast as the narrative chugs on with manic speed towards that thrilling finale.
And so when I got the invite to review The Girl in Red, posed as a different spin on the red riding hood and the wolf story, I jumped for it. But as I read the initial few chapters, I realized that as usual, Christina has taken an axe to our preconceptions about how this story of the girl in the woods who meets the wolf, will turn out to be.

Red, birth name Cordelia, is a twenty-something young girl on a long hike through the woods and abandoned forests somewhere in the US, trudging through to get to her grandmother's house (Yup: A cabin in the woods, that remains true!) after the whole world has been destroyed by a deadly viral infection that starts off harmlessly as the common cold and cough. We first meet her crossing a patrolled border and then running into a stranger [ the Wolf?!] who, predictably wants to get to her food and next, her in that order. In the quick and brutal manner in which she dispatches her assailant off quickly establishes her as a competent young woman, who knows to get by herself and is a mean wielder of that shiny hand-axe. She will kill to survive and to get to her goal. This is established pretty early on, giving us a sense of the resolute young woman, that Red is. In someways, I thought Red was cold, too clinical in her approach to living and that made her not too likable.

But I was wrong. The narrative timeline is split across her present, chronicling her adventures on the road as she hikes across bush-lands and her past, where we are privy to her backstory. And then as we get to know how she actually came about, to be on this hike. And we realize that Red is not really that cold calculating hunter in the woods. She's in fact a nerd, obsessive about acquiring knowledge on everything under the sun. including zombie movies and survival in general. One who loves planning and sticking to the same. Unlike her older brother, Adam who cannot be bothered by "the apocalypse" BS and is still busy trying to work out the internet signals for his phone. What happens to her brother Adam is another point of tense suspense that threads through the narrative of the past as well. In the present timeline, Red actually meets up with two younger kids - Sam and Riley, trying to desperately survive out in the woods by themselves. Red sees a bit of herself in the older girl Sam, precocious and highly wary of strangers while Riley charms her with his guileless naivete and so she deviates a bit from her original plan, in order to make sure the kids reach a safe point before she can move. This bit of her plan derails, as is wont to go [ as they say in the horror movies!] and follows through until the shocking climax of the novel.

Red riding hood, a post-apocalyptic horror story ? Well, believe it. Because Christina delivers a highly entertaining take on the done-to-death post-apocalypse survival drama, in the guise of mixing up fairy tale heroines ( a gutsy, far-feminist combo of nerd-brains and cold practicality ) along with gut-twisting horror in The Girl in Red. I did feel like the story ended a bit abruptly but overall, the narrative pacing was very well done. I highly enjoyed Red's character - who grew on me, despite starting off as a cold, calculating survivor of the woods. And the wolf, you ask? Well, there are perhaps many in this one. I would let you enjoy the process of unpacking that surprise element. With a few twists along the way, Christina maintains the lid on the tense suspense in this thrilling survival ride all the way to the end. You will root for Red, just like I did - watching her evolve and grow from a bookish nerd to a full-out take-charge adult who takes on responsibility and doesn't shy away from tough decisions. A practical no-nonsense girl fuelled by righteous rage at this insanity that's stolen away her dreams. It's a very fast read, as is typical Christina and towards the second half, once the secrets start tumbling out of the locked up cupboards, it screams ahead. Christina never loses track of her plot, keeping it fairly closed up in terms of the number of characters. There are only a very few people outside of Red, who actually matter in the story. Maybe this is a deterrent for folks who love sprawling character maps and expansive world building but that isn't the focus of the story. It's an intensely personal narrative, of a young girl growing up in a world without rules, having lost her only compass of morality and values that was her family.

To say I loved it, is an understatement. Eagerly waiting for what Christina is going to treat us to, next in another of her dark retelling of the fairy tales. More power to you, Christina.

*Received via NetGalley for review*

I learned a lot about having a prosthetic leg, and the attitude that Red had towards it is probably how many people feel about it. I wish the sci-fi aspect was a little bit more explored, rather than hinted at, but I'm glad there was a happy ending.

This book was one of my favorite retellings and a realistic apocalyptic tale at that. This seemed so plausible it was creepy.

I loved the disability rep. You do not read many main characters that are disabled and Red was such a realistic character who did not just endure but fiercely took on anything thrown at her.

There were moments I just wanted to clap like when her mom said to her she could get an infection and she was like so could you. Her disability was a part of her and she was like so what, I maybe different but I am not less.

I loved the message this book sends. There was some language but was definitely an adult / YA crossover appeal.

The Girl in Red is a wild post-apocalyptic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Red has always loved horror books and movies, but she never thought her own life would become anything like the horrific stories she previously consumed for entertainment. But when the Crisis hits and people start dying from a severe cough, she starts putting her knowledge to good use. This way, she and her family can make it to her grandmother's house, where they'll be safe from the virus, military quarantines, or worse.

This book alternates between two timelines: "Before" and "After," giving readers the complete story in a nonlinear and suspenseful way. Sometimes it's not about the outcome. It's about how you get there.

The Girl in Red was fast-paced and engaging. I thought some of the relationships in the book were a little flat (namely between Red and her brother), but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author leaves much to the imagination of readers, which I also appreciated. If you like horror books with some science fiction elements, I highly recommend this.

The Girl in Red was a phenomenal read! I don't often feel anxious while reading, but this book kept me on the edge of my seat (especially when Henry brought children into it). I fell asleep thinking about the story, and was always worried about what would happen next. Red was constantly in danger, and every move she made had to be calculated from every possible angle. One wrong decision would mean death, and I felt her fear and anxiety. I could feel her need for caution and understand her determination.

Additionally, there's a super trippy twist that I was not expecting, and it left me reeling. There are no words to convey my initial thoughts, since I don't think any of them were coherent. After Adam (don't think about Adam), I didn't know how to organize my thoughts. It was completely unexpected, but also perfect for this story. I can't really say any more, because I don't want to ruin the surprise!

Henry shows you human nature when there are no longer laws and expectations. "And people always reduced to their least human denominators when things went bad." We see what people will do when they think they can get away with anything, and witness the darkness that spills over when no one is watching. Women become objects, and children become tools and pawns. Men are recruited to a cause, or killed because life is no longer valued. Red finds herself in the middle of something she never anticipated, and she's struggling to navigate the chaos.

Red is an amazing character. She loves horror movies, reads science fiction, and has a plan to survive. She also has a prosthetic leg, but she doesn't that that define her. Red is intelligent, quick on her feet, and snarky. She doesn't like authority, and believes she knows more than your average person. She's also loyal and unbelievably kind, and fierce when she needs to be. I want more characters like her. “You think a gun is going to help me more than my brains?”

The Girl in Red is very loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood, and the similarities are few. She's trying to get to her grandmother's house, she wears a red hood, and there's a hatchet. Everything else is purely Henry, and I'm thrilled. She's an incredible writer, and I look forward to reading more of her books in the future.

Originally posted at Do You Dog-ear? on June 10, 2019.

The Girl in Red is quite a good read, thrilling and creative, what a fun way to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood! I hadn't previously read Christina Henry and now I definitely need to check out her other books!
I really enjoyed this post-apocalyptic read! I haven't read as many of them this year as I'd like and this brought my interest back for sure!
This version of Red is no simpering coward let me tell you! She is strong and tough against a world that has thrown her nothing but curveballs!
This story is told through multiple timelines: Before and After which really well showed the mindset changed and how dire things had become!
Overall such a good story but I could have done with a teensy bit more closure like an epilogue or something! That might just be me as the story did wrap up well!
Thanks again to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc for an unbiased review! :)

I really enjoyed this update of Little Red Riding Hood from the new queen of mixed-up fairy tales! Henry's Alice and Lost Boy are my go-to recommendations when someone is looking for dark twists on old classics. I am so glad that I can add The Girl in Red to that list. I loved that there was a completely new element added about half-way through when I was sure I knew what was going on. Henry always keeps you guessing and completely engaged. Great book - I will recommend.

The Girl In Red is my very first book by Christina Henry. I love the fact that authors are taking fairytales and remaking them. This one of course is Little Red Riding Hood.

The Girl In Red puts an apocalyptic twist on the story. When the "Crisis" hits, nobody is safe. People are dying, and those who have survived are being round up and put in quarantine. Red has no choice but to head for the woods, to try and survive long enough to make it to her grandma's house.

Christina Henry writes an intense, dark, terrifying, and heart pounding story that will leave you with nightmares. It is a fast paced book, that could easily be a binge reader for many of us! Red is a character that you will absolutely love and cheer on to the end. She's tough, strong, independent, and all about survival. She's smart and her determination is unbelievable. A book you will love if you like retellings!

This was a slow start but yowza does it get exciting and crazy about 3/4 of the way through.
Red is a young woman on her own following a virus wiping out most of the population; she just wants to get to her grandmother's house in the woods. As usual, the humans that remain are much more dangerous than any wolves she may meet but she is more than able to take care of herself. She is a total bad ass. The chapters jump from "before" the Crisis (as she calls it) and "after". Like I said it was a little slow at first and I had to force myself to read but then I got midway through and had to finish it in one sitting. Although with such a slow build, the ending came too fast. I want more. What was the 'crisis'? What did the government do, or not do? What happens next??? Ugh!

Nice build up. Strong characters and lost of fast paced action. I would highly recommend for teens as the main character was a strong feminist character with lots of kick butt roles.

Guys. Go out and buy this book. It was freaking fantastic.

I can't remember the last time a fairy tale retelling really blew my mind. This one was so well done it was almost unrecognizable from the original - except for the wolves, Red herself, and her grandma. There are a lot of dangers for a young woman traveling alone in the woods after a sickness wipes out huge numbers of the population. But it turns out that Red can handle herself - she's spent years reading apocalyptic sci-fi and studying horror movies. She knows where everything always goes wrong, and is determined to not make those same mistakes. Rule number one: Stay Together or Something Will Happen.

If only it were that simple.

Red's plan is to leave home with both of her parents and her brother. It's too bad that fate had different plans for them. When we first meet Red she is alone, no family left. We find out what happened to them over the course of several chapters labeled "Before," where we get the story leading up to the start of the book, interspersed with the story of what is going on "now." I really enjoyed the way the book was split back and forth, for once. This isn't a style I always love and isn't always done well, but Christina Henry did a great job. The story itself is gruesome - she doesn't pull any punches when talking about what Red does and sees, what she's afraid of and what she thinks may happen.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, though I know those questions are essentially just tangents to the main story. The journey itself is the story here, while everything that happens on the sidelines just serves to propel Red forward. Red repeats over and over that she's not a "Chosen One," that she's not here to wonder what happened and figure it out and rescue humanity from what is happening. She's not here to protect anyone or stop anyone or any of that nonsense. She is here to make a journey to her grandmother's house. And no one is going to stop her.

The only thing I did not like was the ending. We've spent so much time with Red on the journey that it feels like the rest of the journey was cut. When the story is about that journey, and you jump forward 25 days with no further discussion, it feels like you're cutting your story off. I'm sure there are only so many ways that Red can get waylaid and put in danger, and I bet if Henry had told those 25 extra days she may have been tempted to steer the story away from the journey and focus more on the things happening around Red so I get the impulse to not rehash the same stuff over again. But it still felt rushed. I wanted so much more! But I am happy that it actually had an ending instead of just leaving things up in the air for possible sequels.

I see that Henry has written several other fairy tale retellings, which I am apparently going to need to read now, so thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this one!

The Girl in Red is an excellent book - well researched and very well plotted. The story is told in flashbacks but Christina Henry handled it expertly so the story was easy to follow which isn't always true of books with similar, technique.

Red is actually Cordelia, a twenty-year old college student who loves horror films and post apocalyptic novels. When we first meet her, Red is alone, cooking over a fire when she's approached by a single man looking for food. She ends up killing him with an ax she keeps strapped on her belt. Many times she reminds herself that its not the apocalypse that's scary, its what people become and do to each other. A woman alone is in a lot of danger and Red has the added challenge of a prosthetic leg she's worn since a car accident took her leg when she was eight. Red is a very likeable heroine. She's smart and intuitive and very well-prepared for the events that occur when a disease called the Cough wipes out most of the world population. Her plan is to head to Grandma's house which is isolated and well-protected in the forest. Grandma, too, is well-prepared and capable of surviving in style and safety.

Flashback to Red trying to get her parents and older brother, Adam, to leave the house before they're scooped up into quarantine camps. They accuse her of overreacting until a trip into town shows them things are worse than they seem. How Red ends up alone and defending herself with an ax is quite a story.

Christina Henry has crafted a fabulous addition to the post-apocalyptic fiction genre. Red is a great protagonist - relateable to readers of all ages.. There was some gore and violence but nothing over the top. This would be a great book club read for middle to high school readers - lots of food for thought.

Red didn’t like to think of herself as a killer, but she wasn’t about to let herself get eaten up just because she was a woman alone in the woods.

Every now and then, you find a book that is so special, so incredible, has such a massive impact on your life that when you turn that last page, you think to yourself, This is what stories are supposed to do to us. This is how it’s supposed to feel. Friends, I am so pleased to tell you that The Girl in Red was absolutely one of those books for me.

“Do you think I don’t know what kind of men this world has wrought? Every woman knows. And those men existed before everything fell apart.”

Let’s start by talking about my undying love for our main character, Red: she is so complex and real and flawed in the best possible ways. She’s snarky and angry and a bit of a know-it-all, but frankly, she’s generally right and nobody really listens to her, so I think she’s totally earned that arrogance. She’s a walking, talking amalgamation of so many reasons people have to discredit a person—she’s a woman, queer (bi or pan, I’m not sure), biracial (black/white), and disabled (she has a prosthetic leg from the knee down on one side). She’s a science-loving, conspiracy-theory-holding, horror-film-aficionado, too (and, frankly, I know many people who fit so many of the same descriptions as Red, so if your argument is that she’s “too marginalized” to feel like a real human being, I’ll ask you to go ahead and leave me out of that conversation, please and thank you).

It was always men like this, men who thought that they could take what they wanted and leave the broken scraps of people behind.

Now, beyond my undying adoration for Red and her brilliant, nurturing self and desperate commitment to survival and freedom, let’s talk about this plot. It’s a near-future apocalypse story, and it pains me a little to say how believable it felt. As someone who is typically also very distrusting of many of the groups of people responsible for the terrors in this story, yeah, I could absolutely see something like this happening and it petrifies me a little to think about. Especially when one considers the underlying theme woven into The Girl in Red’s storyline, which is that in any given apocalyptic scenario, the biggest horror will almost always be our fellow humans.

It was never the Event—illness, asteroid, nuclear war, whatever—that was the problem. It was what people did after. And people always reduced to their least human denominators when things went bad.

The stakes are so high in The Girl in Red and the threats never stop coming; if it’s not the epidemic that started the whole thing, it’s the twisted, brutalized manner Red keeps finding corpses in, or the homemade militia teams prowling for food and women to take, or the leering, stained grins on the faces of so many of the men she encounters. The commentary on rape culture is powerful here and Christina Henry always excels at interlacing a suspenseful, enrapturing storyline with themes of feminism and rebelling against the idea that anyone deserves to take advantage of another human being, ever.

“We all die at the end. What we do before the end is what counts.”

Finally, underneath the immersive setting and story, the lovable-yet-flawed protagonist, the feminist undertones, the mortifying descriptions of the epidemic, and the stunning and powerful writing style that is so uniquely Chrstina’s… there’s also a story of family, whether they’re bound to us by blood or not. Red’s entire reason for fighting boils down not only to survival, but to protecting the people she cares about, too. The familial love is powerful and endlessly heart-wrenching as it reminds us of the lengths we’ll go to and the risks we’ll take to keep our loved ones safe.

Red was going to live, and instead of triumphant victory it suddenly felt like a horse she’d have to drag with her all the rest of her days. The only consolation in being a survivor was that you’d survived.

There’s so much more I’d love to say about The Girl in Red, but let’s be honest: it’s a short story full of twists and turns, and there isn’t much else I can detail without going into spoiler territory. I think this book is probably a stand-alone title, but I desperately hope Christina Henry will at least consider a sequel, because there’s absolutely room for one and I need more time with this story. I know this is the sort of book I’m going to be raving about and re-reading for a long time to come, and I hope you will, too.

Thank you to Berkley for providing me with this review copy in exchange for my honest opinion!

The Girl in Red is a spin on obviously Red Riding Hood but with a twist. Our MC is living in a world where after "the crisis" civilization has pretty much collapsed and only a few percentage of the population is immune to this disease, that starts off as a cough and ends with you choking on your own blood. Our MC Cordelia (Red) is from a mixed race family and after an accident loses a leg. Feeling isolated she watches and reads and isolates herself until the whole world ending. To deter from getting quarantined Red and family head to you guessed it, grandmothers house! hoping to see that the disease has not affected her little village. As The Girl in Red is a small book for this kind of genre. (Not necessarily for the author as she does write some short stories. The Mermaid for example.) The reading went by fast as there was no time to lag in the action and pace. Red was your typical smartass hero. At times it was funny and endearing but other times Red seriously got on my nerves and why is it so hard to take advice from other people especially your professor parents. Yes they don't watch/read pop culture on apocalyptic events but you cannot solely base your survival skills and knowledge on that. especially when she believes has the "knowledge" due to her extensive studying (watching) she should know to ask for help and advice. I did enjoy that the book alternated between past and present which added some mystery to the story and that it definitely veered more into the horror section than some of Ms. Henrys works.

Overall The Girl in Red reads as a typical horror story with a bit of Red Riding Hood that still doesn't do enough to separate itself from other apocalyptic reads. As for the author I found it wasn't as enjoyable as her other novels.

I love retellings and Christina Henry's take on Little Red Riding Hood was something really fun and unexpected. The bones of the original story is there, a young girl dressed in red making her way through a dark wood trying to reach her grandmother's house and facing danger along the way, but apart from that it's totally it's own story. It's set in a post apocalyptic world and we follow two different timelines throughout: After, where Red is alone and trying to make a difficult journey from her home to her Grandmother's house while avoiding military curfews and roaming bands of mercenaries, and Before, where we go back in time and slowly unravel what caused the apocalypse and how that affected Red and her family.

Both timelines were intense and fraught with danger and it kept me compulsively reading because I just HAD to know what would happen next. Red spent her entire life preparing for the apocalypse, her family used to make fun of her obsession with horror books and movies but it meant she was the most prepared to deal with the Crisis that hit the world and wiped out the majority of the population. She was the one with a plan and their best chance of survival in the dangerous new world they now find themselves in. I loved Red, yes she could be a bit of a know it all but she had the brains to back up her boasting and most importantly she was willing to fight to keep herself and others safe. There were times when she could have picked the easy road by herself but chose the harder option and put herself in harm's way to help others and that's always something admirable.

I would have liked a little more information about what caused the virus that ended the world as we know it but at the same time I think some stories can get bogged down in the details rather than focusing on the character's journey and I appreciate that it didn't happen here. Instead we focus on everything that happens to Red and how she reacts to it, the way her instincts kick in and just how hard she has to push herself to survive. The way people acted throughout the book was scarily believable, from the rare survivors who were willing to share their meagre supplies to the groups who practically turned into animals who only cared about themselves and saw anyone else as the enemy. This story is definitely a dark one and we see far more of the latter group than we do the former but there was just enough hope thrown in to keep it from getting too dark and depressing.

This story was everything I didn't know I wanted from a Little Red Riding Hood retelling and I can't wait to start reading through Christina Henry's backlog.

Red needs to get to Grandma's house but this is no fairytale land she is traveling through.

This is a postapocalyptic war zone where a disease, known as 'the cough', runs rampant and has decimated the population. The world is a dangerous place with enemies around every corner, or so it seems. Most people have been rounded up into quarantine camps but Red would rather take her chances on the road.

Alternating between now and before, we get a pretty good idea of Red's home life and family dynamic prior to the sickness. Red, who has a prosthetic limb, after being hit by a car at the age of 8, is used to people underestimating her. She becomes frustrated with this and constantly feels compelled to be tough and prove people wrong.

Highly risk averse, Red feels well prepared for this. Certainly more prepared than your average Joe. She knows the rules. She has been studying them via horror movies and other like media for years. I loved this aspect of Red's personality. Hello, relatable.

Traveling with her whiny brother, Adam, Red feels like she needs to not only carry her weight but his too. Put simply, Adam was a huge pain in the ass. Red has the patience of a Saint, frankly, putting up with him as she did.

I loved how quickly the action in this kicks off and I thought that the postapocalyptic world was well imagine. The two timelines worked well playing off each other to reveal the entirety of the story. Watching Red's character gain strength over time was so satisfying.

This being said, I did want a bit more. I know that not every book can be 500-pages but this was just so interesting and the ending, to me, felt rushed.

Overall, I think this is a very solid story. I enjoyed Henry's imagination quite a bit. This is my first book from her but it definitely won't be the last one I pick up.

A hearty thank you to the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review. I would definitely recommend this to readers who enjoy darker content and women who kick butt!

Flawed character Red in need of safety and shelter from the…

“You’re a wolf and I’m a hunter. I’m no Red Riding Hood to be deceived by your mask. I know what you are.”

“She was just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that didn’t look anything like the one she’d grown up in, the one that had been perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.”

And

“Red would not be a hunted thing.”

You either care for Red or not, that factor, the empathy will have you reading along with all the world topsy turvy with her survival key. Reader please consider this is not nonfiction narrative or treatise on worlds demise, so naively walks along care about the character and road more than facts, reality and details.
I loved the road, conflict, and struggle of Red.

I am considering maybe Red of the fallout or apocalypse would be a good title.
Just wanting to get to grandmas house and possible safety some may fall in the swing of her axe, men, wolves.

Wolves made into bad one of the tale in past and the real wolves of the earth, beautiful creatures in existence and not yet in extinction, ones essential in life’s cycle, the real walking one with four legs, love the wolves and please give them some love and no mislabeling or misrepresentation.