Red Hood Blog Tour

You are alone in the woods, seen only by the unblinking yellow moon. Your hands are empty. You are nearly naked.

And the wolf is angry.

Since her grandmother became her caretaker when she was four years old, Bisou Martel has lived a quiet life in a little house in Seattle. She’s kept mostly to herself. She’s been good. But then comes the night of homecoming, when she finds herself running for her life over roots and between trees, a fury of claws and teeth behind her. A wolf attacks. Bisou fights back. A new moon rises. And with it, questions. About the blood in Bisou’s past and on her hands as she stumbles home. About broken boys and vicious wolves. About girls lost in the woods—frightened, but not alone.

Elana K. Arnold, National Book Award finalist and author of the Printz Honor book Damsel, returns with a dark, engrossing, blood-drenched tale of the familiar threats to female power—and one girl’s journey to regain it.

Red Hood

by Elana K. Arnold
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release Date: February 25th 2020

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retellings, Fairy Tales

Links:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43721070-red-hood

Amazon: https://amzn.to/32Ip5Us

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/red-hood-elana-k-arnold/1130335629

iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/red-hood/id1465581675

Bookdepository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Red-Hood-Elana-K-Arnold/9780062742353?ref=grid-view&qid=1573657505950&sr=1-1

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/red-hood-3

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Red_Hood.html?id=W-i4xQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Favorite Quotes:

Fairy tales and fables are powerful because they tell us truths we already know. They ring a bell deep inside us, striking a resonant, vibrating note that makes us nod yes with recognition.

Forcing anything when it comes to sex is completely unacceptable.

Darling, it is not your job to make boys happy.

Sometimes boys become wolves.

Review:

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold. I am not totally sure what to say at this moment. This wasn’t the book that I was expecting. I was expecting a modern retelling of Red Riding Hood but instead, I ended up with a giant metaphor of being raped and killing your attacker. Something I wish I had a bit more warning for.

Red Hood is told in second person. Which it has been a long time since I read a story like this. Second person is definitely one of the harder story views for me to read. It is a lot harder for me to connect to the characters this way.

This story is very gory and very dark. Normally I would mind gory and dark if it made sense, but I don’t feel like it makes sense for this book at least not for teenagers. I find that this doesn’t work so well in this YA thriller fairytale retelling.

There are moments that I feel like Arnold is trying to be an educator. She is trying to teach teens how to use a tampon and put a condom on it. I can possibly understand this for kids that have the lack of parental education or even sex ed in school. I just wish that Arnold did a better job with it vs going about it the way that she did.

I think the biggest issue that I had with this book is that the message is supposed to be about female empowerment and girls banding together. In the end, it feels like this is feeling you that there is justification in murder. That is not an endorsement I support.

This book is written to make the reader very uncomfortable so I get that. I just found that the book wasn’t really for me. I can’t say that it is a bad book either. I would definitely give it like 3 stars. I do think that Arnold is a very skilled writer.

About the Author:

ELANA K. ARNOLD is the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning young adult novels and children’s books, including the Printz Honor winner Damsel, the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and Global Read Aloud selection A Boy Called Bat and its sequels. Several of her books are Junior Library Guild selections and have appeared on many best book lists, including the Amelia Bloomer Project, a catalog of feminist titles for young readers. Elana teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program and lives in Southern California with her family and menagerie of pets.