Red Hood

DNF.

Note: I feel bad giving this one star, but I just had a really bad experience all around with this book's opening chapters. Please understand my rating in light of that reviews are supposed to be subjective, and one star is supposed to just mean “didn't like it.” Not “this book is objectively bad and no one should ever read it.” Please don't let my bad experience dampen your enjoyment if you actually enjoyed this book!

CW for menstration, menstrual horror (?), graphic period sex, graphic animal death, eye trauma

I found the narration in second-person extremely off-putting, especially because the novel opens with the POV character having her first period start during a sexual experience with her boyfriend. I am completely fine with body horror, blood, menstration and sex scenes, but the details of her period were way too graphic even for me, and the amount of blood (described as gushing) seemed unrealistic for hour 1 of a first period.

I wasn't sure how I was supposed to experience the second-person narration of the main character receiving oral sex. It felt too graphic for YA because of how detailed it was, even though it used euphemisms like “your core” to mean the POV character's genitals. The sex scene felt really long. It could have been much shorter, given that the point was apparently to convey the POV character to run away into the woods with embarrassment about getting period blood all over her boyfriend's face. She could have been made to run away embarrassed without a sex scene, like if she noticed a wet feeling + blood on her legs right as she was leaving the gym? I don't know how necessary the oral sex unexpectedly becoming period oral sex was for the plot.

I think she exchanged zero words with the boyfriend during the entire time the boyfriend was present? If this was a first sexual experience with the boyfriend as implied, I would have expected some dialogue, even as simple as Boyfriend asking “do you like this” or her saying “don't stop.” This could even be conveyed wordlessly with facial expressions, pauses and nodding (think then-nonverbal Ariel's emphatic smiling and nodding during Kiss the Girl in Disney's Little Mermaid). At minimum there should be some awkwardness from figuring out body positioning?

I think YA authors have a responsibility to portray sex in ways where the reader comes away with better understanding of what makes good consent practices, which can be done via authorial commentary whether portraying an assault or a fully consenting experience (especially during a fully consenting experience).

Moving on to the running into the woods, it was implied that the lone wolf that attacks her was attracted to the menstrual blood, that was of such volume that it was just trailing behind her on the ground? I didn't read far enough to learn if this wolf was actually her transformed boyfriend who is actually a werewolf or something, so I'm allowing for this wolf to have been supernatural in origin, since real wolves hunt in packs and are generally afraid of humans.

Putting aside the myth of predator animals being particularly attracted to the smell of human menstrual blood (compared to their usual nonhuman prey), this whole action sequence had so little internal monologue that I found it difficult and confusing to figure out the main character's thought process. And the eye trauma horror and the strangulation involved in her fighting the wolf was too much for me. Our POV character seemingly had gained supernatural strength, in being able to pick up this wolf by the throat and throw it against a wall hard enough to kill it.

Maybe there was indeed a supernatural explanation for her abilities and the presence of this lone wolf, but I was still wondering the whole time why she didn't try to climb a tree, and why she wasn't injuring her bare feet on roots, sticks and rocks. The dearth of internal monologue to show her decision-making process made it very hard to understand.

Overall, this book just wasn't for me. If intense action horror is your thing and character introspection is not (no judgment here, you like what you like), you will probably have a better experience than I did.

Merged review:

DNF.

Note: I feel bad giving this one star, but I just had a really bad experience all around with this book's opening chapters. Please understand my rating in light of that reviews are supposed to be subjective, and one star is supposed to just mean “didn't like it.” Not “this book is objectively bad and no one should ever read it.” Please don't let my bad experience dampen your enjoyment if you actually enjoyed this book!

CW for menstration, menstrual horror (?), graphic period sex, graphic animal death, eye trauma

I found the narration in second-person extremely off-putting, especially because the novel opens with the POV character having her first period start during a sexual experience with her boyfriend. I am completely fine with body horror, blood, menstration and sex scenes, but the details of her period were way too graphic even for me, and the amount of blood (described as gushing) seemed unrealistic for hour 1 of a first period.

I wasn't sure how I was supposed to experience the second-person narration of the main character receiving oral sex. It felt too graphic for YA because of how detailed it was, even though it used euphemisms like “your core” to mean the POV character's genitals. The sex scene felt really long. It could have been much shorter, given that the point was apparently to convey the POV character to run away into the woods with embarrassment about getting period blood all over her boyfriend's face. She could have been made to run away embarrassed without a sex scene, like if she noticed a wet feeling + blood on her legs right as she was leaving the gym? I don't know how necessary the oral sex unexpectedly becoming period oral sex was for the plot.

I think she exchanged zero words with the boyfriend during the entire time the boyfriend was present? If this was a first sexual experience with the boyfriend as implied, I would have expected some dialogue, even as simple as Boyfriend asking “do you like this” or her saying “don't stop.” This could even be conveyed wordlessly with facial expressions, pauses and nodding (think then-nonverbal Ariel's emphatic smiling and nodding during Kiss the Girl in Disney's Little Mermaid). At minimum there should be some awkwardness from figuring out body positioning?

I think YA authors have a responsibility to portray sex in ways where the reader comes away with better understanding of what makes good consent practices, which can be done via authorial commentary whether portraying an assault or a fully consenting experience (especially during a fully consenting experience).

Moving on to the running into the woods, it was implied that the lone wolf that attacks her was attracted to the menstrual blood, that was of such volume that it was just trailing behind her on the ground? I didn't read far enough to learn if this wolf was actually her transformed boyfriend who is actually a werewolf or something, so I'm allowing for this wolf to have been supernatural in origin, since real wolves hunt in packs and are generally afraid of humans.

Putting aside the myth of predator animals being particularly attracted to the smell of human menstrual blood (compared to their usual nonhuman prey), this whole action sequence had so little internal monologue that I found it difficult and confusing to figure out the main character's thought process. And the eye trauma horror and the strangulation involved in her fighting the wolf was too much for me. Our POV character seemingly had gained supernatural strength, in being able to pick up this wolf by the throat and throw it against a wall hard enough to kill it.

Maybe there was indeed a supernatural explanation for her abilities and the presence of this lone wolf, but I was still wondering the whole time why she didn't try to climb a tree, and why she wasn't injuring her bare feet on roots, sticks and rocks. The dearth of internal monologue to show her decision-making process made it very hard to understand.

Overall, this book just wasn't for me. If intense action horror is your thing and character introspection is not (no judgment here, you like what you like), you will probably have a better experience than I did.