** spoiler alert ** Despite the sanitised reproductions flitting across theatre screens or rendered in block-colour glory in children’s picture books, fairy tales have traditionally functioned less as sumptuous rags to riches accounts railing against strict class systems and more as rather pointed cautionary tales designed to keep children both morally upright and close to home. Frequently, the take home message is something along the lines of avoid the woods at all cost or never trust a stranger. It’s a sign of a confident author then that Jackson Pearce in her retelling of Little Red Riding Hood adheres far more strongly to this warily paranoid paradigm than to the increasingly romanticised take on the monstrous that is being seen with increasing frequency in today’s young adult genre fiction. Read the rest of this review here