Little Red Riding Hood: Crimson Bound is supposed to be a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but the connections aren’t too clear. The only part of the “romance” that made sense was Erec’s conquest of Rachelle and it only made sense after a big reveal towards the end. Hodge forces romance into the book and forces a Love-V, but she executes both poorly. Rachelle didn’t truly have feelings for either guy, to Erec Rachelle was just a long waited conquest, and from Rachelle’s POV, I couldn’t tell how Armand felt about her. There was no true romance between any of the characters. Erec is a womanizer who continuously flirts with Rachelle and even though she claims that she’ll never fall for Erec’s charms, she still sleeps with him after Armand “betrays” her. How do you fall in love with someone you barely talk to? Even when Rachelle and Armand did talk, they didn’t have conversations that held much substance so how could she fall in love with him.The other possible suitor for Rachelle was Erec.

Armand never did anything except be in the same room as Rachelle and yet she falls in love with him. Romance: Not only was romance not needed in this book, but Hodge also executed it so poorly. I can’t think of any redeeming qualities Rachelle possesses and spent the majority of the book sighing, rolling my eyes, and going (see below) because of all of her whining. If I could’ve entered the book, I would have killed her just to take her out of her misery.

She plagued with guilt and survivor’s remorse so she goes back and forth between declaring that she should die and whining that she doesn’t want to die. I will fight to my last breath to save the world.” Rachelle may sound noble, but she’s not. Rachelle: I can summarize Rachelle in three sentences: “I deserve to die. I now see the error of my actions and may need to reevaluate how I pick books. I had picked up Crimson Bound simply because I had enjoyed Cruel Beauty so much.

I understand that Crimson Bound is not part of the Cruel Beauty Universe so I shouldn’t be comparing them too harshly, but the overall quality of the story shouldn’t change so drastically from one retelling to another. I don’t understand how Hodge can create an amazing retelling like Cruel Beauty, but each subsequent retelling ( Gilded Ashesthen Crimson Bound) be lesser in quality than the previous one. I expected to like Crimson Bound since I loved Hodge’s Cruel Beauty, but no such luck.

This book was an absolute disappointment. I’m just going to leave that there for a minute.

Crimson bound