~ Little Red by Shelby Rhodes ~

 

Author: Shelby Rhodes

Title: Little Red

Series: Fairy Tales Retold  1

Pages: 287

Release date: 2022 January 29

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Rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb: 

Follow along and you will see a tale retold in a world of unimaginable creatures, gods, and goddesses. A world filled to the brim with magic. Our story begins with a sorcerer with too much power without the age to match.

Ryder, our hero, who just so happens to be a painfully short redhead, has found himself burdened with the fates of thousands, in a life where he has so far received very few answers. In order to find the cure to the plague that has overtaken the Kingdom of Solais, he sets off on a quest to seek out his slightly crazy grandmother, in the Yore Forest.

Add in one flirty, handsome werewolf Prince, a sarcastic sorcerer-hating werewolf, some full-blown insanity, and a bit of magic, and Ryder finds his momentous task doubling in difficulty and stress. But all is not what it seems, and sometimes life takes you to places you never wished to stand. In the end, Ryder's decisions and paths are not choices but destiny. And in said destiny lies insurmountable magic, death, and maybe even love.

My review: 

Fairy tale retellings are mostly great stories and I enjoy reading them, so when I found out this book is about Little Red, I said yes, please. First, the cover. I just love it. Cute. 

The start of the story was really good and I enjoyed it, couldn't put it down. Magic and werewolves, family drama and the promise of a good romance. Sounds good, right? 

But after a while I got bored with the story and the characters. Somewhere at 30-40% I wanted do DNF it because it couldn't held my interest anymore. BUT. I was still curious how the story will end, so I stayed. I don't know if it was the right thing to do, after all? Because it wasn't better toward the end either. And I realised why it was. The story was just TOO YA for me( Although the MC is 25 and the other one is 400+, age gap?! hehe. So it's basically NA, but they were much like a YA couple...). I can enjoy young adult stories sometimes, but this time I wanted more from it, so it was annoyingly slow and empty for my liking. 

The fantasy elements were really great, and the world building with all those magic stuff, blew my mind. I think it's a really great fantasy YA book, but I thought it would be more like a hotter NA?! Those few sex scenes were lacking of the hotness and the romance was blurry too (for my liking!). 

After all, I give it a 3 star, because it's not a bad book. The writing style is really good and enjoyable, and the world building as I said earlier, awesome. But it wasn't for me this time. 

Ps. bonus point for the magic spells and the added bonus magic book at the end.