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293 pages, Paperback
First published June 18, 2019
The Written Review
New week, New BookTube Video - all about the best (and worst) literary apocalypses to live through!
Red, a young woman on her own, is travelling through the forest in a post-apocalyptic world.![]()
Who's the wolf in the woods now?
...they had watched in horror as town after town and city after city was decimated by this sickness, this mysterious terror that had sprung up..."The Crisis" (as she calls it) has already ruined most of the world and nearly all of her family and now Red is alone in the world - almost.
Grandmas didn't die from stuff like that. Grandmas went on and on, enduring year after year, shriveled and worn but somehow ageless.Red's grandmother lives isolated in the woods, in a self-sustaining little cottage hundreds of miles away.
The fellow across the fire gave Red the once-over, from the wild corkscrews of her hair peeking out from under her red hood to the small hand axe that rested on the ground beside her.But the joke is on them, because if there is one thing Red has been preparing for - it was the apocalypse.
He'd thought she would be polite, that she would offer to share her space with him. He'd thought she would trust him, because she was alone and he was alone...she was not following his script, and he didn't know how to improvise.And there is not a thing she would not do to get to where she wants to go.
"I am going to my grandma's house, and if you try to stop me I will slice off whatever I can reach and leave you here to bleed to death."In short - this book was everything that I could have hoped for and more.
One thing Red had learned from years of reading and movie watching was that people were far scarier than any disease...Between her confidence, her logic and her stone-cold killer instincts, I was completely fascinated.
"I see two bodies with open chest wounds and some mars on the floor. Until I actually see an alien life form crawling on the ground, I'm not buying it."The plot was fast-paced and exciting - even though this was a retelling, I still had no idea where the story was going and I loved it.
She had to get to her grandmother, and she still had a very long way to go.With thanks to the publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review
"I am going to my grandma's house, and if you try to stop me I will slice off whatever I can reach and leave you here to bleed to death."With alternating timelines that reveal the decimation of the world, Red is our consistent main character who shows that being a woman in a man's ravaged world is her very underestimated strength. She doesn't need guns or an intimidating appearance or even all four limbs. She has serious smarts and fierce intuition. The Girl in Red is a violent, post-apocalyptic retelling of the little red riding hood from once upon a time. Girls are stronger now, and their grandmothers can take care of themselves, too. Check it out.
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.*
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.
“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.”
It was always men like this, men who thought that they could take what they wanted and leave the broken scraps of people behind.
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.
“We all die at the end. What we do before the end is what counts.”
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.
"The wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."
Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid, worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way.” -James Finn Garner, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
"Cordelia was her name but Red was who she was"
"Red was going to be the final girl, the sole survivor of a massacre, just like in horror movies."
"Good luck to you then, Red Riding Hood."