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

Rating: 3.5 stars

This wasn’t my favourite of Christina Henry’s retellings, and I found it a little harder to get into than the other books in this ‘series’. Admittedly, I still read two-thirds of it in one sitting, but I’d been hovering over it for nearly a week before I did so. However, I do think that was partially because of my own personal tastes when it comes to novels.

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.

Red is, as usual for Henry, a wonderfully fleshed out and realistic character. She’s mixed-race, amputee, bisexual and completely bad-ass. She’s a killer, brutal and without hesitation, but not because she wants to be. She kills because she has to, and only because she has to. She was ready for the Crisis, bag packed and plan in place, and when the worst of it hit, she took herself off to grandma’s house. What Red is not is the Chosen One, and this story reflects it. She doesn’t get answers, and she doesn’t always save the day, because she’s just fighting to survive. She spends days and days tromping through the woods, and not much time doing derring-do and crazy post-apocalyptic adventures, because she’s just a regular woman in a world flipped upside down.

I did find, personally, that the story seemed to end a little abruptly. I felt like I was waiting for a more fleshed out ending than I got, but that might just be because I’m used to reading stories about that Chosen One who inexplicably saves the world. I did like the realism that it gave though, because in a post-apocalyptic world, regular people probably wouldn’t know anything about the true nature of the Crisis and what was causing it, and they too would be forced to piece together clues from the things they stumbled across.

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.

Note: This review was copied verbatim from my Goodreads account dated August 20th 2019.