I tried to like this book and the characters but the FMC Adele was whiny & continually made selfish decisions. I don't think she had any redeemable attributes. I felt the book had promise but felt super rushed to tell a mediocre underwhelming story.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley.

I just reviewed Red Wolf by Rachel Vincent. #RedWolf #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Loved this book. Can't wait to read more by the author. Fast paced and interesting. Will add to my classroom library.

What a great twist on the classic Red Riding Hood story. The women having the ability to turn into wolves, and being responsible for protecting the community is wild. I was along for the ride with this story and have so many students that would love it!

This book has multiple things I love: Red Riding Hood retelling + Rachel Vincent's amazing writing. The last YA novel I read by her back in the early 2000s left me wanting though her adult novels drew me in and had me desperate for more and Red Wolf is the perfect blend of both! I would definitely recommend for anyone who loves Red Riding Hood retellings.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.


“…The wolf has always been in your blood. This has always been your fate.”

This book had everything I wanted in it. It was fantasy while being set in a French little village. We had Red Riding Hood and Wolf Vibes. Fierce Women. And the men folk courting the women. And let me just say Miles was swoon worthy. This book did take me a little to get into, but once I was in I was hooked and loving every moment of. But is there going to be a 2nd book?? I kinda need some answers!!

} v i b e s {
~ Red Riding Hood and Wolf
~ Granny in the forest but make her badass
~ Fierce Women
~ Men do the courting
~ French Village
~ Werewolf gene
~ Betrothal for protection

Little Red Riding Hood is one of my favorite fairytales! This was a very refreshing fairytale! It consisted of many twists! I found the story to be very atmospheric, haunting, and eerie. The writing is very dark and lyrical filled with lush descriptions. Thus, this was everything I wish for in a fairytale! I recommend this for fans of Red, Riding Hood, For the Wolf, and The Girl in Red!

This was a wondrously refreshing new look at the Red Riding Hood and the Wolf story. I loved the twists, some more obvious than others.

This book was a wonderful twist on the original Red-Riding Hood tale. If you love retellings with a twist, I definitely recommend it.
Thank you NetGalley for and ARC

What a amazing book! I feel in love with this one. The story is spectacular, all the characters are super vivid. I recommend with my heart.

This was a very simple retelling of Little Red RidingHood. It was ok but I felt like the story just wasn't deep enough. It was a kind of light coming of age novel with some suspense and some fantasy and a dash of romance. I think for readers who want to try this one out they should check out their local library before fully committing.

I think that the twists and turns about Little Red Riding Hood were interesting, some were also predictable because many authors have taken this fairytale and added darker spins of werewolves or changing the roles. I think many patrons/readers would like this book. I wasn't as intrigued as I had hoped, but I recommend this to readers that like darker twists on fairytales.

Rating: 4⭐️

Thank you to HCC Frenzy for gifting me an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this was a very fun Red Riding Hood retelling. It follows Adele, a redwulf, who’s lineage is tasked with secretly protecting their village from the monsters who lie in wait in the dark woods.

This was so fun because Adele is Little Red as well as the Wolf from the original tale. The magic system was intriguing and I like how the different types of wulfs are described. I really love Max and how he accepts Adele for who and what she is.

There’s so much that unfolds through this story that I don’t want to give too much away. It’s better if you read it and see how Adele grows into her wulf form while also trying to keep a hold on her humanity.

Overall I thought this was a decent retelling and I’ll definitely be checking out Rachel Vincent’s other works!

What I was hoping would be a fast-paced supernatural tale ended up being a very slow, boring, and disappointing story. I had the grand idea that this book would be really dark and magical but it had very slow development, dull characters, and a lame ending.

Adele was neither a great nor horrible character. Like all the characters in this book I found her to be overwhelmingly dull. She wasn’t actively horrible to read about and her POV was fine but I was really hoping that she’d be this badass warrior werewolf. Instead, she mostly pined for the village boy, sulked when the new boy came into town, and then behaved beyond stupidly and recklessly when she realized her family’s true history.

The plot was slow-going and ultimately not very interesting. Maybe it’s because I was going into it expecting lots of action and monsters but the book felt like a high school drama set in an old-time village with wolves. There was the bit of a love triangle, the familial tension, the spunky kid sister, the reckless and petulant teenage MC, and the very active rumor mill. All of this seemed to be the main focus instead of the village’s safety, living up to the family’s calling, and battling monsters.

I really liked the concept of this book and some things were done better than others. I liked the setting a lot and the warped Little Red Riding Hood aspect. I loved that this author flipped the script a bit and made grandma the Big Bad Wolf. It was something that could have been done better, but I still like that it was at least done in general. I liked the first scene where Adele changed into her wolf form. It was written to be chaotic, messy, and confusing which was perfect because it was exactly how Adele felt. I mean, would you have it all together if you randomly changed into a wolf? That scene was one of my favorites in the book. I also really liked the subplot concerning Adele’s father and what happened to him. I could still feel his influence in her life despite him being dead and I like how he still felt like his own character.

It feels like the book had so much potential between the characters and the concept but then nothing came from that foundation. The things that should have felt horrifying and shocking were dimmed by my lack of caring about the boring plot or characters. None of the plot twists felt like twists and nothing ultimately felt resolved by the end of the book. I keep imagining it like there is a fantastic story locked up behind the words that were actually written and it was its own form of torture that this story felt like it had so much potential that wasn’t reached. I wish that I could recommend this book but I just can’t bring myself to give it any more than two stars.

This was strange. I am not sure what I read but I don't think I enjoyed myself. I will not be buying this for the library. That cover is stunning though and I am sure it will find a reader audience.

Thanks to NetGalley & HarperCollins Children's Books for the early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Red Wolf follows Adele who's an ordinary girl living in a small but tight-knit town. She's set to be engaged to the love of her life until her mother sends her into the woods to deliver food to her grandmother and gets attacked by a wolf. She discovers her werewolf heritage and how she and her family have a long destiny of protecting humanity from the beasts of the mysterious forest.

I will say it takes a while to get into, if you can get past the info dumps that's 10% of the way through it does pick up.

This is one of those rare books where I actually don't hate the love triangle! I have to comment the author for managing that, ha. You feel bad for the boys involved and they're not self-centered annoying jerkwads so you kind of root for both of them.

Adele makes pretty weird mistakes but I still rooted for her to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Definitely a great addition to the Reimagined Red Riding Hood mythology!

<i>"Ever since I was a small child, the dark wood had called to me, its eerie voice half seduction, half warning. I had no intention of answering. Yet I couldn't seem to stop myself from listening."</i>

TL;DR: A <i>fine</i> retelling of Little Red Riding Hood -- but one which, unfortunately gets too bogged down in The Love Triangle and doesn't add anything new to the story.
<b><i>I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.</b></i>

Vibes: Red from <i>Once Upon A Time</i> -- but in 18th century France.

Genre: True YA Fairytale Retelling.

Character MVP: Meh. Maybe the grandma, who seems badass. Maybe Max, Adele's arranged-marriage-potential-fiance.

Verdict: Solid 3 stars. This book was *fine.*
Endless refrain this summer: a retelling, in order to stand out from the crowd AND the original tale, has to do something different. Like Marissa Meyer's <i>Scarlet</i>. But this was pegged as a "high-stakes" reimagining and...I didn't get that.
The Little Red character turning into a wolf? Red did that on <i>Once Upon A Time</i>.
Little Red as wolf-hunter/assassin/protector of the village? It's been done.

And, unfortunately, this particular retelling was bogged down by 2 really unfortunate things:

(1) The Love Triangle: y'all know I'm over Love Triangles, especially the totally cliche YA ones. Here, Adele loves Grainger, the son of the Head of the Village Watch. She's 16, but she wants to marry him and have his babies, and live in a cute cabin on the edge of the woods next to her BFF, because he's PERFECT and makes her feel special and, like, doesn't make her fun of her or think she's a witch, which seems like a really low-bar but sure. (And it's okay that this book is ALL ABOUT MARRIAGE even though she's 16, because it's YE OLDEN DAYS and that's just how things were.)
And then, we learn that Adele's mom pulled a King Stefan from <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> and betrothed her to this guy from the neighboring kingdom -- er, village -- and just didn't tell her, because it would mess up her magical wolf transformation. Or something.
Which puts us in the classical YA Love Triangle Conundrum (which, I think, I've really only ever seen Cassie Clare do something totally WTF about): our intrepid heroine can't love two Really Good Guys so either (1) one dies or (2) one turns out to be Not So Nice.

(2) All the lengthy ponderings of monstrosity which...I get what Vincent was going for, it just fell really flat with me.
Adele spends so. much. time. agonizing over the fact that she's a monster because she can't kill The Bad Wolves and viewing herself as a monster which...just seemed really at odds with the Creepy Forest Vibes she took such great pains to set up.
And, look. I know *why* she had to do it: because Our Intrepid Heroine is DiFfErEnT and if she didn't question the black-and-white-morality that comes from living near a magically growing, practically sentient Forest, then we wouldn't have our Magical Realization at the end.

What I wanted: a Buffy-type story where Adele learns how to be The Protector of The Forest. ("Into every generation, a slayer is born...)
What I got: 40% Love Triangle (Adele dithering over which Super Cute Boy she was going to end up with), 40% Am I Monster, 10% action and 10% I-have-these-cool-new-powers-let-me-learn-how-to-use-them.
Sigh.

Red Wolf is a quick adventure, re imagined Little Red Riding Hood. Dark woods with monsters surrounds Adele's village of Oakvale and Adele can here it calling to her. When she travels through the woods alone to reach her grandmothers cottage many changes happen and her life is no longer on the path she thought it was. I enjoyed the story and characters and it kept me reading well past when I should have gone to bed. 3.5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book for an honest review.

Gosh. Talk about going into a book expecting one direction and ending up completely 180 degrees from where you thought you would be! One thing I will mention is there was sort of a love triangle element that wasn't quite flushed out - romance in this is very minimal. Don't let that discourage you though as this is heavy-hitting and will beg you to keep reading. The ending makes me think there will possibly be a book two? I will definitely pick it up if that's the case.

Rachel Vincent is about to try her hand at a retelling in Red Wolf! As you can probably guess from the title alone, we're about to dive back into the world of Little Red Riding Hood, but with a twist.

Adele has spent her entire life in one small village. She's never left, as the foreboding woods keep most of the villagers trapped within. For monsters are lurking out in those woods, and each year they seem to grow in number.

However, one night in Adele's sixteenth year, her life was permanently changed. She learned something about herself and her family. Something that will change the way she looks at the woods and her entire village.

“Turn around, Adele...Just turn around and walk in a straight line until you hear the axes. Until you come out of the forest.”

Red Wolf was such an enchanting read (pun not intended, this time!), I found myself sucked in Adele's story, unable to look away. I have always enjoyed Rachel Vincent's writing, and I feel like it truly shined here.

Red Wolf is a thrilling take on the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood. What I loved the most about this tale, other than the heavy infusion of fantasy elements (more on that in a second), is how much agency Adele's character is given here.

It's refreshing! The magical elements (which I won't detail because it's a spoiler) create a fun twist in the plot, keeping me fully invested in the story. Between those elements, and the fact that Vincent was unafraid to sow room for conversation and discourse along the way, Red Wolf ended up being a surprisingly rich and intense read. One that I would recommend for all fans of fairy tale retellings.