Title: Red August
Author: H. L. Brooks
Series: Red August #1
Publisher: Weatherhill
Publication Date: August 19, 2015
Source: Author
As I have stated before, I love reading retellings of fairytales. However, some fairytales get retold more often than others. Some over done. So I was really excited to find one that is a retelling of the Little Red Ridinghood story. I personally haven't come across too many of them, so I was ready to jump right in!
This is the story about August and her journey of discovery. Throughout the course of the story she realizes that she really doesn't know much about herself or her family.
This story starts off with August and her mom packing up all of their belongings to move into August's grandmothers house. August's father recently passed away and they had decided it would be a good idea to go live near her grandmother, where her father grew up, for awhile.
August has to start a new school. She is a couple years more advanced, so she is the younger in her class and has never quite fit in. It is no different at her new school. Actually, it is even worse. One of the most popular boys starts picking on her for no apparent reason and the situation escalates really quickly.
Eventually August meets her mysterious neighbor Faolan. She is drawn to this super sexy stranger and cannot help but find herself thinking about him. However, he is very hesitant to get close to her. If only August knew what can of worms she was opening when she decided to pursue friendship (and hopefully more) with this man.
In the beginning August is pretty much just an extremely horny 16 year old. She has a few erotic dreams about a wolf man and needs to pleasure herself a little too often. Now, I am not against steamy sexy scenes at all, but I do think there is a time and place for them in the story. In the beginning I think a lot of this could have been left out. I don't really think it helped with character or story development. A good bit of it felt misplaced and/or unneeded. This is especially the case when it would be mentioned that August would pleasure herself to sleep.
Thankfully, that all ended up calming down at a point and it became more about the story and not just some girls erotic dreams and unquenchable need for an intimate touch. I really loved the story. Though I thought the beginning was a bit rocky, at some point the story really smoothed out and found its groove. I found myself really enjoying the characters. I had no problem imagining a different voice for each of them in my head as I read along.
As far as character development went, I thought it went about very nicely in the long run. At first I was really annoyed with the character of August. I thought she was a horn down who needed to have a man in her life and that she needed a lot of positive attention. She was very insecure, always wondering if men found her attractive etc. I was happy to see this start to ebb away. It gives me a lot of hope for her in the future.
I also cannot wait to delve further into the other characters. Each one of them has a pretty mysterious backstory that we only begin to touch upon in this story. I am also looking forward to relationships growing and changing.
This is definitely a series that I will be impatiently waiting for the next book to come out.
My Rating
4 of 5 stars!
This review is based on a copy provided by the author in exchange for a fair and honest review.
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