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Red Riding Hood (2011)

by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright(Favorite Author)

3.51 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0316176044 (ISBN13: 9780316176040)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Poppy (an imprint of Little, Brown and Company)

review 1: This novel is a tie-in to the movie of the same name released in 2011. I really enjoyed the movie, and I grabbed this book thinking that it was the novel that the movie was based on. Consider my disappointment when I got home and realized that it was written based on the screenplay rather than the other way around. In general, these types of books don't hold much weight with me. I'd almost rather read the screenplay.But I turned out to be pleasantly surprised, and, in general, wrong. This book is a decent read. I especially liked the first half of the book because rather than giving us a scene-by-scene retelling of the movie (which is what I expected,) it actually fleshes out this universe and this story quite a bit more. We actually get to see Lucie, the main character's ... moresister, for a while before she's killed off. We get to see more of the world and the setting also. However, once Father Solomon gets to the village, this sort of goes out the window, and the rest of the book is pretty much the movie scene-for-scene. That said, it's still an interesting read, especially if you haven't seen the movie and are dying to find out who the wolf is.That said, this book has two major flaws. The first one is with the writing: namely, point of view. This book is written mostly in third person omniscient, which really just does not work. I understand that when you're adapting a visual media to a written one, issues like point of view can be really difficult to tackle. When we watch the movie, we can see the characters and we don't know what anyone is thinking aside from what they can emote. In a book, we can see more, and in this book, we see everything. Not only does the author switch from one character's POV for entire scenes, but she also does it in the same paragraph. One minute we're in Valerie's head, and the next we're in Peter's. It's jarring and frankly lazy. Also, the writer likes to "tell" too often for my taste, and doesn't let us work things out on our own. For example, right at the end when Valerie kills her father, she writes, "Valerie stood with tears in her eyes, her world in tatters." Well, no shit. Her mother's face is scarred, her sister and grandmother and father is dead, and also her father was the werewolf. We KNOW her world is in tatters; you really don't have to spell it out for us. I think this book could have been a lot easier to engage with if we'd seen everything over Valerie's shoulder rather than jumping into each and every random villager's mind.The other major issue I have with this book has of course been discussed in detail: there is no ending. This book ends with the scene where Peter finds Valerie in the forest on the way to her grandmother, and makes it sound like he is the wolf and Valerie is okay with it. The final 14 pages are only available online, and while I'm glad I have access (and knew the ending from seeing the movie,) that is some cheap-ass marketing right there. What's the point? Why do this? It's just a gimmick, and a stupid one. Furthermore, the last 14 pages on the website don't even include the final scene of the movie, which is possibly my favorite part: the part where Valerie decides she doesn't want to live in the village anymore after everything that they did to her and everything that happened there, and that she would rather live apart even if it means taking a risk. I found that a really interesting conclusion for a movie based on "Red Riding Hood" to come to, and something pretty damn original for a modern movie, and yet? Gone from the book entirely.If you've got an internet connection and a few hours to kill, you'll probably want to check this out. If not, see the movie. It's just as good.
review 2: There's always been something off about Valerie, maybe it's her too green eyes, or her best friend being the son of a murderer, or her not being squeamish when looking at dead things, or maybe its the fact that she's the only person to survive the wolf's attack. Every month Valerie's village is plagued by a werewolf who kills if an offering is not provided. This year Valerie and her sister are old enough to go to the harvest, and things look up when Valerie sees her childhood friend Peter, now all grown up. Valerie and Peter slip into the woods to catch up about everything that happened since Peter's father killed someone, and they had to move away. Neither of them think to look up at the moon, until they hear the howl of a wolf. The moon is red, the wolf is hungry. They scramble out of the woods and part ways, Valerie runs to find her sister and friends. When Valerie reaches home she is told that her sister is staying at a friend's house because it was closer to where she was working. The next day a body is found, ripped to shreds. It is Valerie's sister. Valerie runs from the scene to find Peter.(I don't know, I guess they're together now) When she returns home she finds out from her mother that a marriage for her has been arranged...with the blacksmith's son Henry.(interesting choice seeing as Peter's father killed Henry's mother) After a yelling match Valerie locks herself in her room. A group of men go out to kill the wolf, which doesn't go so well. The wolf could be anyone, but only Valerie can talk to it. Who is the wolf? Will Valerie have to merry Henry? Will anyone else die? Read to find out. less

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