Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Scarlet.

A retelling of Robin Hood.

Sounds awesome right?

Hmmmm...

It wasn't bad, so I won't say that it was, but there were things that did annoy me.

Let's just skip my normal small summary and go straight into the spoilers for this, so if you don't any please please please go away and read that book and judge for yourself.

Okay.

So.

In general, I enjoyed the story of the book.  You follow a young girl named Scarlet who is the Will Scarlet of Robin Hood's merry men, and yes, she's a GIRL.

So she's in hiding.

Of course.

And there is a (slight) love triangle between her and John Little (AKA Little John) and Robin Hood himself.  Which made me soooooo angry because I'm like "no, I cannot accept that."

It's okay because the big secret of the book - which I figured out wayyyyyyyy before they dropped the ball on it - is that Scarlet is actually Marion in hiding.

However, the writing threw me off.  Her language is just so... meh.  Like, she talks in an uneducated way, and also thinks like that.  So it pissed me off.  I was ready to put the book down, and then they explained why and I was able to accept that reason.  So that fixed that problem.

But my major problem was in the interactions between John and Scarlet and Robin.  They were so frustrating.  "Be with him."  "Are you in love with him?"  "I ain't with anyone."  "Kiss me."  "No."  BLAH BLAH BLAH

But then the last third of the book was like BAM all in your face and dragging me in until I was finished with it.  And of course I want more.

Why?

It was actually really well thought out.  The world was well written, and in the department of originality, the idea that Scarlet was actually Marion was kind of awesome.  I treated this more as an origins story rather than a retelling, but I think that either way it would work.

Truly, this book was interesting.

I very rarely see Robin Hood retellings, and when I do it's usually the same old story except maybe Little John wasn't so little, or the Sheriff was something or this was that.  But NEVER had I seen Marion as a disguised thief.  That was clever and amazing and I couldn't help myself but feel drawn to her character.

She cussed almost as much as I used to when I was eighteen - which was how old she is in this book.  I loved it.

Unfortunately, I can only give this one a 3.5 star rating, but I was told the sequels get better and I can't wait for it to come in!

Well, this was short and to the point, but that's only because I honestly find myself drawn to the idea of watching one of my favorite Robin Hood movies now - "Robin Hood Men in Tights."  A classic, I know.

So please join me for my next read: "Monstrous Beauty" by Elizabeth Fama.

Until next time!

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

What can I say?  I LOVE retellings.  And this is (one of) the month(s) for them.

Although it was marketed as a Sleeping Beauty retelling, I believe this was more of a mash-up of Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast.

And I believe this for multiple reasons.

All of them will be explained.

However, this book was amazeballs for another reason: it was absolutely unique in the way that it was presented.

So yes, I ended up giving this book a high rating.

And yes, I just used the word "amazeballs."

Anyway...

Okay, so this is where I'm about to go into some spoilers and I suggest reading this, especially if you like sci-fi/dystopian novels with a level of truth to them.

Did you leave?

Are you coming back?

I don't know if you did but I'll trust you.

So let's get started!!

This is the story of Fiona.

And she's a very interesting character.

For one, she's a thirteen-year-old trapped in a seventeen-year-old body.

That's right.

The book starts out in this post-apocalyptic world in which the bees are extinct (which is an actual issue we're facing today).  With bees extinct there are no plants, no animals.  Nothing.  So she wakes up remembering her thirteenth birthday party, but now she's older with a new body.  Well, not NEW new, but like it's grown.

And she's like wth.

And I'm just like okay... what now?  She walks out of her room, noticing a tattoo on her hand with ten lines coming out of an oval, and then she heard someone coming up the stairs.  And it's her brother.

And he's turned into a creature.  Sort of.

So the story continues and we meet Dreyden Bowen, her neighbor from across the street during the time before, and we learn that a woman needs to pretend to be a boy in order to protect herself from the men in the world.

Because there are the militia, and then there are the raiders.  And they're both outside of the wall.

Oh yeah: the entire population of healthy, useful people are inside of the walls repopulating.

So he remembers her and off they go as he tries to protect her.  And they fall in love.  Oh joy.

But the parts that I found interesting wasn't just their interactions (she sometimes sounds like a kid because that's what she was when she went into a medically induced coma), but the back story for how things happened and how they revealed it.  Through flashbacks that Fiona has.

We learn that, apparently, the bees were dying out so the government stepped in and created genetically enhanced bees.  But their venom was toxic to humans.  And it spread the bee flu.  Now the bee flu would cause someone to go insane and then die after attacking like all of their systems.

So they created an antivenom.  But the antivenom started changing people.  It made them into super muscular, angry, feral people who no longer look like people because they're twisted with sinewy muscles and rage.  I wasn't sure if their faces looked wolfish or not, but I didn't need to know that.  Because let's be real, some feral dude with bulging muscles is coming at me I'm not looking at his face.  I'm running.

And so we learn that the countries elite (she was a child musical prodigy) was given the ten doses (hence the ten little lines on her tattoo) and now theyre going insane.  And so they begin putting people into medically induced comas.

She goes on this crazy adventure only to learn that she's been cured and that she is the first one to survive - because someone is killing the survivors.  And - surprise surprise - it's the governor who runs that walled city.  Because dude doesn't want to give up power.  ::insert dramatic eye-roll here::

So what was unique?  The world and how it came to be.  People have to pollinate their own crops to keep on living, (that's right, because in order to kill all the bees the government - once again useless - drops this pesticide to kill them.  but it also killed ALL other plants and animals and whatnot) and there are these weird wafers that are basically a full meal with tranquilizers in them and this weird bubble coagulant that will spread into the wound and stop the bleeding.

I enjoyed reading about the tech and the history of the world which was thoroughly explained.  But mostly, I LOVED the characters.  Each one is unique and brings something different to the table.  And I couldn't predict how they would act.  

At all.

Not only that, but the writing was beautiful.  I was hooked so badly to this book that I couldn't sleep last night because I wanted to just keep reading.

And rarely does a book make me do that.

So overall, it was perfect on paper - well, according to my ratings chart.  Which makes this a (rare) 5 stars.  I know, I couldn't believe it either!

SO.  This concludes my review of "Stung" by Bethany Wiggins.  I hope you'll join me in reading "Alice in Zombieland" by Gena Showalter.

Ta-ta for now!