Christina Henry

This book is intense, from the first page to the last. It’s brilliantly written, and the story is captivating! I’m completely obsessed, now. Not only am I going to go back and reread Alice in Wonderland, AND read (for the first time) Through the Looking Glass… I’m also very likely going to keep up with this series! I prefer Stand-alones to series, and I didn’t realize this was just in a series until after I started reading it. So now I’m (happily) stuck, looking forward to the next book!… (més)

Harry loves horror films, so when she gets a job cleaning house for renowned horror director Javier Castillo, she can't believe her luck. Castillo’s Chicago mansion is filled with props, posters, and paraphernalia from all her favorite films, and she gets to spend her days taking care of these items. She should be having so much fun. She is also so very careful to respect Castillo’s privacy. She never asks him questions...especially not about the family scandal that forced him to leave Hollywood. Then when Harry starts hearing voices in several totally empty rooms and seeing things move around by themselves...her thoughts can’t help going back to the whereabouts of Castillo’s missing family. The house has secrets, some dark and maybe dangerous...secrets that she can’t ignore...but exploring and uncovering them could result in her losing much more than just her job. This book called to me from the library shelves, and I HAD to take it home with me. I really connected with Harry from the first. The story is told almost exclusively from her point-of-view and in the present, with the occasional short chapter about her past life. She came from a very strict and overly religious family who did not approve of her film choices or many of her other choices either. Several short chapters tell us about the house's scandal that Harry is only guessing about through most of the story. These three different perspectives really help to give insights into the Harry and Castillo characters. Harry is A 30-something-year-old single mother with a teenage son, Gabe. She's trying to keep their heads above water in Chicago where work is hard to come by. Gabe is facing all the trials of high school with the richer kids and facing the painful truth that he can’t have everything that they have, and Harry really has no emotional support for herself. It’s a bleak existence made worse when her new landlord chooses to sell the house she lives in, meaning that she now also has to look for a new place to live. These financial pressures explain very well why Harry looked the other way ignoring the creepy things going on in the house... and why she puts up with all the strict rules she has to follow while working. I believed from the first that the readers are meant to know who the true monster is in this story and that knowledge, along with a steady stream of supernatural incidents, raises the story’s tension about a 150%. It's a book you will find almost impossible to put down even though it has a much slower pace than other some other books of this genera that you might have read. My only criticism was that the ending was much too abrupt. After building a connection with the characters, I wanted to know how they coped after the ending. That was the only reason the book didn't get 5 stars.… (més)

I thoroughly enjoyed my escape read of The Girl in Red by Christina Henry. A reworking of the classic tale of Red Riding Hood, this apocalyptic horror story follows a 20 year old half black girl with one prosthetic leg and some intense survival skills as she hikes through the woods to reach her grandmother’s place.

The story switches back and forth between “Before” and “After” so we get a clear picture of where Red has come from, what has happened and what she has seen. A sickness has hit the world, it starts as a cough but develops quickly and once caught, takes the life of the victim quickly. Now with so many dead, looting and violence becomes commonplace and groups of various armed militia are appearing. After Red loses her family, she takes to the woods and heads out to her grandmother’s house but along with way it becomes obvious that either the disease has mutated or something else is threatening people.

The Girl in Red had a few scratch-your-head moments and the story didn’t always mesh together in a sensible way but Red’s sassy and resourceful personality and the suspense level of the story kept the pages turning. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that the story was never fully resolved. The main points of Little Red Riding Hood – the trip to Grandma’s and overcoming the "wolf" were dealt with in a unique and stylish manner.… (més)