Review: The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Guys. Go out and buy this book. It was freaking fantastic.

I can't remember the last time a fairy tale retelling really blew my mind. This one was so well done it was almost unrecognizable from the original - except for the wolves, Red herself, and her grandma. There are a lot of dangers for a young woman traveling alone in the woods after a sickness wipes out huge numbers of the population. But it turns out that Red can handle herself - she's spent years reading apocalyptic sci-fi and studying horror movies. She knows where everything always goes wrong, and is determined to not make those same mistakes. Rule number one: Stay Together or Something Will Happen.

If only it were that simple.

Red's plan is to leave home with both of her parents and her brother. It's too bad that fate had different plans for them. When we first meet Red she is alone, no family left. We find out what happened to them over the course of several chapters labeled "Before," where we get the story leading up to the start of the book, interspersed with the story of what is going on "now." I really enjoyed the way the book was split back and forth, for once. This isn't a style I always love and isn't always done well, but Christina Henry did a great job. The story itself is gruesome - she doesn't pull any punches when talking about what Red does and sees, what she's afraid of and what she thinks may happen.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, though I know those questions are essentially just tangents to the main story. The journey itself is the story here, while everything that happens on the sidelines just serves to propel Red forward. Red repeats over and over that she's not a "Chosen One," that she's not here to wonder what happened and figure it out and rescue humanity from what is happening. She's not here to protect anyone or stop anyone or any of that nonsense. She is here to make a journey to her grandmother's house. And no one is going to stop her.

The only thing I did not like was the ending. We've spent so much time with Red on the journey that it feels like the rest of the journey was cut. When the story is about that journey, and you jump forward 25 days with no further discussion, it feels like you're cutting your story off. I'm sure there are only so many ways that Red can get waylaid and put in danger, and I bet if Henry had told those 25 extra days she may have been tempted to steer the story away from the journey and focus more on the things happening around Red so I get the impulse to not rehash the same stuff over again. But it still felt rushed. I wanted so much more! But I am happy that it actually had an ending instead of just leaving things up in the air for possible sequels.

I see that Henry has written several other fairy tale retellings, which I am apparently going to need to read now, so thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this one!

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