An odd story I enjoyed even if I’m not quite sure I understood it.

When tragedy strikes Faolan Kelly begrudgingly follows a gunslinger to a new home where punishment and penance are one in the same and with a few heavy secrets and a creature in the woods she has to keep her wits about her before she ends up buried beneath the blood soaked dirt at her feet.

Like another reviewer I too expected a horror/monster story with a old west backdrop but that was not the case. It wasn’t a bad choice because I think overall it was a strong story I just think some of the marketing or maybe my own judgement on the cover made me expect one thing but end up pleasantly surprised by the other.

The strongest aspect of the story is the characters, Faolan is up there as one of my favorites as she manages this disguise and does her best to do what is needed until she can escape but at the same time have this level of sass both in internal monologues and outward speech that I couldn’t get enough of. Every relationship formed here felt so genuine and sweet and I felt very much like a kindred spirit to her which definitely carried throughout the book.

As for the plot I think I get it to an extent I do however wish we had gotten a bit more of the why and how. Yes it is explained and I can make my own connections to other things to round out bits that were left rather hazy but with so many strong elements it was a bit underwhelming when answers were revealed.

I really did enjoy this in a way I did not anticipate when I began so now I’ll have to spend my time learning just what else this author has written to add more favorites to my reading list.

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review!**

This book was kind of a mystery to me. What I mean by that is that I loved it in some sections, while being ambivalent toward it in other sections.

I loved:

-The characters of Tallis and Will
-The underlying message of being true to yourself
-The cats!

I liked:

-The folksy way that Faolan talked

I disliked:

-That the religion wasn’t really explained at all. I wanted to know more, so that I could have hated HisBen even more.
-The fact that this was called a Western Horror but it wasn’t scary or horrific at all. Neither did it cause me to feel dread. Like, at all. The story was good, but calling it a horror book is more than a stretch—and I usually don’t like it when people say that books aren’t horror. But this really wasn’t horror.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

What a FUN read!!! Perfect pitch for a Western/horror story; the main characters were well developed and each blended into the story seamlessly. Just enough sexy tension to keep it lively without getting"erotic". Highly recommend.

This book checked every box I didn't even know I had when I picked it up!

Fast-paced with intricate world-building and a wonderful host of characters, McBride has created an unputdownable story that left me hooked until the very end. If you're a fan of Western books / films and enjoy the supernatural, this is the book for you!

A creepy, semi-dystopian story with supernatural elements. It felt a little bit like the movie, The Village, but more satisfying.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The strongest element of Red in Tooth and Claw is its ambiguous, haunted, lonesome Western setting. The novel feels like it belongs to another time and place, where gunslingers used to roam across the desert on palominos and bays, and hardened bandits took advantage of the poor settlers of the West. Life was hard and mean, and people barely could scratch out a living in the dust, and life was often as lonely as the coyote's wail across the prairie. The author's use of voice, diction, and dialect for her characters is masterful. Faolan, our main character, has depth and personality in proverbial spades. Faolan and all the others BELONG to the world they're set in, and I can't praise that enough.

It's the plot where things get a bit wonky for me. I went into this expecting a horror story, perhaps if I got lucky, maybe even a werewolf Western! Despite the gorgeous cover, this is not a werewolf story. While there's horror elements- guts, gore, mysterious happenings and the like- it never actually feels tense enough to be scary. Faolan has some of the thickest plot armor of any YA protagonist so far this year, and that's really saying something. There's also a romance that feels VERY tacked on, almost like its there just to check off a prerequisite box "All YA novels must have a romance!" The nonsensical, insta-love cheesy romance combined with over use of some pretty heavy Deus ex Machinas rob what could have been a GREAT horror story of all its dread and anxiety.