ARC Review: "Red Hood" by Elana K. Arnold

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Summary from GoodReads

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.

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REVIEW

I received an e-ARC from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. 

Dear Lord this review is a hard one to write. Not because the book was bad, but because it was SO DAMN GOOD!

I knew after reading "Damsel" that Elana would do the same with Red Hood too: deconstruct the fairytale and give to the readers the spirit of the story set in the real world: that everywhere there are predators and sometimes women have to fight back and become equally as predatory as the ones who hunt them.

Bisou Martel lives with her grandmother in a quiet town. She has a loving boyfriend but when at the party of her high school something goes wrong, Bisou wakes up the next day with the news that a boy from her school was killed in the woods.

But Bisou had only seen a wolf hunting her.

This story is about rights: the right to love your body as it is, the right to defend yourself, the right to have friends despite the different backgrounds. And above all? The right to your body from having your period to deciding when you want to make love with the one you choose to.

Bisou passes through the emotional rollercoaster any teenager has been through but in a toxic environment in school. With boys feeling entitled to anything they want, quiet girls trying to overcome trauma and sweet boyfriends who are supportive.

The grandma was also a surprise as we also get to read her story too. The entire book is written in the second POV and personally, I didn't mind because I felt like I was being the one addressed to.

I loved the symbolism and the slight touch of paranormal in the plot, which made it even more realistic and damn scary. Because all of you know that the world isn't always as safe as we hope it is and that you can never know what can happen to any of us.

Red Hood is a spectacular symbolic story and Elana has again outdone herself in this one!

About the author:

ELANA K. ARNOLD writes books for and about children and teens. She holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing/Fiction from the University of California, Davis where she has taught Creative Writing and Adolescent Literature. Her most recent YA novel, DAMSEL, is a Printz Honor book, Her 2017 novel, WHAT GIRLS ARE MADE OF, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her middle grade novel, A BOY CALLED BAT, is a Junior Library Guild Selection. A parent and educator living in Huntington Beach, California, Elana is a frequent speaker at schools, libraries, and writers’ conferences. Currently, Elana is the caretaker of seven pets, only three of which have fur.