The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

The Girl in Red

by Christina Henry

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....

Reviewed by shannonmiz on

5 of 5 stars

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You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight .

Truly, there is a lot of hype surrounding this book. I saw it on several blogger friends' sites before I went ahead and decided I needed to read it too. And trust me, the hype is earned. This is one of the most brutally realistic-feeling apocalyptic novels I have ever read, and I have read quite a few! It flashes back and forth between Red's current situation, and how she got to the point where we begin the story. This decision by the author is extra great, because you really can see how and why Red transforms as she does since the plague first began.

It's an awful, dismal world that Red now finds herself in. Admittedly, those are my favorites to read about. Possibly because it makes ours feel like less of a dumpster fire? Though the thing that makes the world in this book so realistic is that it feels like it comes directly from said current dumpster fire. The government is basically awful and no one particularly wants to go to their "quarantine camps". People are legitimately killing survivors over their race, which... yep, I can see it happening here too. Red has a prosthetic leg, which of course makes people doubt her (which they really, really should not). More than that, she is a woman who is at times alone in the woods. And nothing has changed for women walking alone, either.

Red is very smart but she's not perfect, and that's the way I like my heroines. She's got flaws and she recognizes them and tries her best to overcome them in order to survive. You can see how hard she tries to survive- nothing falls into her lap, she works at it every minute of every day. It's exhausting, and the author does an incredible job of showing just how exhausting. How tired Red is of constantly being on alert, how desperately she misses the comforts of "before".  To me, that realism is the absolute cherry on the top of this already engaging and exciting book.

Bottom Line: I genuinely could see the apocalypse plague mirroring this book, which is both terrifying and impressive. The author does a tremendous job of making us love and care about Red, while being immersed in a world that will straight up horrify you.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 25 June, 2019: Finished reading
  • 25 June, 2019: Reviewed