This year’s theme: RED RIDING HOOD

Here we are, at the end of Valentine Week 2025.

The novels I have featured this year:

Red Rider, by Kate Avery Ellison (2019, indie-published)—reviewed HERE

Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak (2018, indie published–Clockpunk Press, which seems to be owned by the author)–reviewed HERE

Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey (2011, Harlequin Nocturne)–reviewed HERE

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge (2015, HarperCollins)–reviewed HERE

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer (2013, Macmillan)—reviewed HERE

TODAY:

For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten (2021, Orbit)–quick capsule review

AND

Other interesting fictions based on Little Red

First, a capsule review:

For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten (2021, Orbit)

I reviewed this novel for my first series of Valentine Week posts, in 2022. Find my review HERE.

A quick recap and a few thoughts: The really nice cover art screams Little Red, and a few of the superficial details do, too. But for the most part, this novel is Beauty and the Beast all the way. As we’ve seen this week, Beauty and the Beast makes a natural pairing with Red Riding Hood, and elements of both fairy tales are often seen in retellings of Red Riding Hood. I think it’s interesting that in these novels–and especially in Whitten’s–the marketing all points toward Red Riding Hood. Why not Beauty and the Beast? That’s especially true of Whitten’s novel. Would a content analysis of fairytale retellings published in 2020 and 2021 reveal a surplus of Beauty and the Beast? It’s a mystery to me why marketing departments sell readers via Little Red but the story itself goes all Beauty and the Beast on us. Could the popular culture appeal of the Disney Beauty and the Beast (which I actually really like, by the way) be so overwhelming that books and their covers need to veer away?

Whitten’s YA novel, which features many of the usual YA tropes, is about two sisters, one of whom has to be given to the wolf–some mysterious creature in the woods–in a murkily-explained ritual sacrifice. The main character gets shipped off to the wolf’s castle, where she finds a tormented beast laboring under a curse. The most interesting part of this novel, in my opinion, is the sentient forest. But see my post of 2022 for a full review.

OTHER RED RIDING HOOD FICTIONS:

—The Path, a single-player indie video game that re-invents Red Riding Hood as a parable of emerging womanhood. It is stunning, an art object all its own and a really creepy horror-themed, Freudian-infused journey. There’s only one rule to the game: “Stay on the path.” BUT in order to win the game you must: (SPOILER ALERT!) go off the path! You can get it on Steam for PC.

—Into the Woods. Red Riding Hood is one of the major story lines in the wildly popular Steven Sondheim 1986 musical, and Little Red herself is one of the major characters. In 2014, Disney (did I say I wouldn’t talk about Disney in this series? I lied.) made a movie based on the musical.

—Angela Carter’s amazing Red Riding Hood short stories, in her collection titled The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Harper & Row, 1979). There are Bluebeard retellings, Beauty and the Beast retellings, and many more, all beautiful, all strange, all completely wonderful. The main Red Riding Hood retelling is “The Company of Wolves.” It was the basis for a film directed by Neil Jordan in 1984. Two other tales in Carter’s collection are based on some version of the Red Riding Hood folktale: “The Werewolf” and “Wolf-Alice.” But “The Company of Wolves is especially superb. “See!” it ends. “sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.” Wow, what a story.

You can get this collection at Amazon in hard cover, paperback, and audiobook; in paperback at Barnes & Noble; and in ebook and audiobook formats on Apple.

HERE’S WHERE I ANNOUNCE MY FAVORITES

If we are speaking of the novels I’ve reviewed, that’s a hard one. I liked two of them–Meyer’s Scarlet and Lackey’s Beauty and the Werewolf–but I didn’t just adore any of them.

BUT I do adore that Angela Carter short story, “The Company of Wolves.” And I love the indie game The Path. If I were more of a musical comedy fan, I’d probably mention Into the Woods as well.