Reading Right Now! (332)

 Happy Magical Readathon Orilium Spring Semester! I am very excited about this readathon, which was created by G, BookRoast on Booktube (Book Youtube). I am already behind on where I probably should be, but it's fine. Everything is fine.

So, what I'm Reading Right Now! is...

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry -- This is my first book for the readathon, and it fulfills the prompt to read a book that has something with claws on the cover. I think it covers the Shapeshifter course. This book has a big wolf on the cover, which has claws! This is also a book that I got as a Netgalley arc a while ago, so now I'm reading it. I checked out a physical copy from my library.

I'm really close to being finished with this one. It's a post-apocalyptic Red Riding Hood twist tale. There's a virus that has killed a bunch of people, and our main character Red is trying to get to her grandma's house.

So this book was written before the pandemic, and after living through a pandemic, some of it hits close. The disease is called The Cough, kills you pretty quickly. Colleges and schools closed down and never opened again. People are sent to quarantine camps. It even talks about people fighting over bottled water, if the author had only known it would really be toilet paper! haha.

I have so many Christina Henry books on my radar, pretty much all of her books I want to read.

I'm also always a sucker for a post-apocalyptic tale.

This one has been okay so far. I don't really like the main character Red so much. I find her to be a know-it-all, bossy, stubborn, preachy, prickly, thinks she's always right. I would not travel along with her in the apocalypse. Can't do it. She's also anti-gun, which makes no sense to be in a post-apocalyptic situation. She's not opposed to killing for protection, because she has an ax that she chops people up with. In the beginning of the story, she even has the opportunity to have a gun, just in case, but she decides to throw it in a lake. That's stupid.

And another thing!! So Red is biracial, her mom is black and her dad is white. Why, when there's a killer virus going around and a bunch of people are dying, would racist people decide that's the time to attack her family? That just doesn't make sense to me. Why would a truckload of racist rednecks pick that time to show up?

This is also told in two different timelines, a before and after. It's a really unneeded feature. I think the story would have worked better to have just started at the beginning. The timelines aren't even that far apart.

 

So that's what I'm Reading Right Now! I feel like I aired many grievances about this book, but I think it's okay. I don't hate it. Some of the things just annoy me. I'll definitely read more by Christina Henry. What are you reading?