The Girl in Red

Christina Henry

2019 • 306 pages

Ratings36

Average rating3.6

From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a postapocalyptic take on the perennial classic "Little Red Riding Hood"...about a woman who isn't as defenseless as she seems. It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago. 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....

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Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Carri Bright

Red's got a lot of anger and I'm here for it. The depictions of how terrible people behave during a pandemic is also extra uncomfortable given the current world situation. It was a good time to read this book.

July 27, 2020

RiffMonkey

I was very annoyed by this book. The thing I love about little red riding hood is the mystery element. Finding out the grandma is the wolf, but also speaking to the wolf. I love the adaptations that make the wolf something other than the bad guy the most.

This didn't really even have a wolf element. It was more just every bad guy was an animal or something. It was very mild. The main character was also really unlikeable. She was ‘so much smarter' than everyone else. The whole of the people apparently could not think of all the things she could. Honestly, it was so annoying.

The whole he/she-ing of the kids was also super dumb. Have you ever heard of the word ‘they' perhaps. For fucks sake. We didn't even get to see the fucking grandma. The ending was anti-climactic and the way the story was told with all the flashbacks also made all the main plot points be right next to each other, even though they were really weeks apart. I didn't like that either.

March 15, 2023

Ghost

3.5 rounded up.

Decent story, vaguely reminiscent of a zombie novel without actually being one. The disability representation (Red is an amputee) was pretty well done as far as I can tell, it's not treated with undue theatrics nor as a throwaway attempt at diversity in which the character's disability actually has no disabling effect it's just a character who also happens to be disabled, that was pretty refreshing.

November 24, 2022