• Author: Christina Henry
• Series: Standalone
• No. of pages: 363
• Dates read: 24.07.20 – 29.07.20
• Star Rating: 2

Plot: 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…

I am disappointed again sadly.

I read Christina’s previous books and I loved them so much even making it to my all-time favourites but I wasn’t a fan of her Mermaid book and sadly I am not a fan of this one either.

For starters, I want to say that Red as the main character was great. I have never seen an amputee represented in any of the books I have read to my knowledge, I could be wrong. We get to see her tackle the misconceptions of being an amputee, her resourcefulness as she treks through North America and we see her intelligence grab hold of the page.

We also see her discuss her story of being a black mixed-race woman as well, which I thought was really good, though the cover doesn’t really show her with the hairstyle she mentions in the book so I am disappointed that the cover doesn’t match the description of the character. Her race plays a big role in this book so it should be reflected on the cover.

I am a white able-bodied woman so while I enjoyed seeing this representation I cannot say whether these are accurate or correct pieces of representation. So while I was happy to see the representation I cannot say whether it was a good/accurate representation.

Apart from how great Red is sadly everything else fell short.

First off if you ever saw my The Fellowship of the Ring review you will know that I don’t like pieces of writing that just consist of walking and that is most of what this book is. At times we do get to see some scenes in the past which show scenes other than walking but mostly it was just a lot of walking and it was boring.

And since that was most of what the book consisted of I just could not connect to the story at all. We also know that Red is all alone at the start of the book and once I found out why she was all alone and what happened to her family I didn’t really care that much after.

One thing I will say and this does enter the spoilers category so if you haven’t read the book, please skip ahead. I don’t know how comfortable I was in having Red’s mother, a black woman, get the illness out of all her family and then end up dying by the hands of white supremacists. To me she was already experiencing the trauma of having the illness and knowing she won’t survive and I just felt that having that was enough. This book is written by a white woman so that also is what made me not happy with the decision. You already gave your black female character the illness does she really then need to be killed by white supremacists? For some reason it did not feel right to me.

Please let me know if any of you agreed to disagreed with me on this!

…

…

Ok you can carry on reading!!

This is so disappointing as I loved Christina Henry’s previous books and I am sad I did not enjoy this as much as the others. I am going to take a break from her books as I am sadly not enjoying them as much anymore. I was planning on reading her Looking Glass book which is set in the same world as her Alice and Red Queen books but I don’t want to be disappointed by that considering Alice is one of my all-time faves.

The next book I will be reviewing is The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant!