Girl In Red

The Girl in Red- Christina Henry
Berkley Publishing
Release Date: June 18, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: 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....

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If you're a fan of horror movies or post-apocalyptic novels, you know the rules. Stay together. Keep your gear on you at all times. Never deviate from the plan. Follow the rules and you live. Don't and Something Bad Will Happen. But what happens when you aren't the hero of the horror movie, but just trying to get to grandma's? 

Red is a twenty year old college student who is addicted to horror movies when the Cough starts. A virus that infects at random, within months the world has changed. Millions are dead, the electricity is out, communications are down.  The military is sending people to quarantine camps for their own good. But Red doesn't believe that.  A naturally suspicious and paranoid individual, she convinces her family they need to hike hundreds of miles through the woods to her grandmother's house, where they would be safe. But even though millions are dead, others are still alive.  And what Red has forgotten about the movies is: it isn't the apocalypse that's the problem.  It's what happens after.

The Girl in Red is one of Christina Henry's (Lost Boy) dark twists on a classic fairy tale, in this case Little Red Riding Hood.  Red is a stubborn, often obnoxiously know-it-all type who isn't less annoying for being right most of the time. She's a loner, paranoid and suspicious, but when the world changes those are some of the best survival skills to have.  She often seems younger than twenty (if I just get to Grandma's house everything will be ok), but also has the world weary wisdom of someone much older.  She doesn't need to learn the hard way that just because someone is human they aren't also a predator, or that there are things even in the post-apocalyptic world that are worse than death.  She knows, as we all do deep inside, that the darkness of humanity doesn't go out just because a Crisis Has Occurred. As emotional as the book is, Red can only function by mostly being in a state of shock or emotional numbness the wholes time.  It is the reader who mourns for the ones who die, because Red can't (which made me feel a little guilty for not especially liking her. Who would be at their best in this situation?).  

The reader also wonders more than Red about the Big Picture.  What is the virus killing people and can a cure be found? How many people are dead and how are others surviving? What really happens at the quarantine camps? What are the monsters and what can be done to stop them? Will civilization be able to rebuild in any way? Red isn't (as she admits to herself) the Chosen One who can discover the answers and solve the world's problems.  She (and the reader) learn more than others might about the monsters in the dark, but she accepts (as the reader must) that it isn't her place to find the answers.  She is the Every Person just trying to stay alive based on knowledge gleaned from genre fiction and the childish belief that getting to grandma's will make everything ok again.  And maybe, in this strange new world, that is the hope that counts the more than anything else.

I recieved an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Lost Boy

Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook- Christina Henry
Berkley
Release Date: July 4, 2017 

Rating (out of 5):
📚📚📚📚📚

Caution: Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan’s first—and favorite—lost boy to his greatest enemy.
 
Peter brought me to his island because there were no rules and no grownups to make us mind. He brought boys from the Other Place to join in the fun, but Peter's idea of fun is sharper than a pirate’s sword. Because it’s never been all fun and games on the island. Our neighbors are pirates and monsters. Our toys are knife and stick and rock—the kinds of playthings that bite.

Peter promised we would all be young and happy forever.
 
Peter lies.

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What if you took the well known story of Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up, and started asking questions.  What if you thought about what a society composed entirely of young boys would be like?  What if you took the old myths of magic and blood, youth and paradise,  and applied their rules to Neverland?  

The answer would be: you get Lost Boy by Christina Henry.  A fantastic, dark retelling of Peter Pan told from the point of view of Jamie, Peter's second in command, who has lived on the island longer than any boy except Peter.  Jamie, who Peter convinced to go to Neverland where they would be young and free and happy forever. As Peter brings new boys to join them he promises them fun adventures raiding pirates, swimming with mermaids, playing what they want, eating when they want, with no one to tell them what to do.  But someone has to teach the boys to defend themselves in pirate raids, how to hunt food, how to tend wounds.  This is what Jamie does.  He becomes the one who looks after them, who protects them, who shoulders the grief when they die.  Because staying young forever doesn't mean you can't die.  There are pirates, accidents, and wild animals, but there are also Battles- because what do young boys like better than to fight?  

We watch Jamie go from disappointed to disillusioned with Peter as Jamie tries to keep the group safe and Peter considers them replaceable.  Things degenerate (or maybe were always like this and Jamie finally realizes it?) into more Lord of the Flies than happy adventures.  Jamie begins to discover the island has secrets even he did not know, although Peter did.  And Peter, finally fed up with the fact that Jamie looks after the other boys, decides the only way to regain Jamie's love and friendship is to destroy everyone that might get between them.

Lost Boy is a compelling, haunting, and at times chilling story: fast-paced and well-written, you can't put it down once you've started.  Your heart aches for Jamie as he begins to realize the truth, and remember truths he had forgotten from the world before the island.  Lost Boy is both a twist of an old classic, and a brilliant story of self discovery, loyalty, and identity that shakes up all your preconceived ideas and invites you to take a new look at Peter Pan and the boy who became Captain Hook.

Fans of ABC's Once Upon a Time will love Lost Boy, as it reminds us that a villain is only someone who's story hasn't been told yet.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review