Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley - Cartwright

Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm going to say 4 stars - I wanted to stick with 3, but the book did hold my attention pretty well. As badly as it jumped around and confused me - I was really surprised by the ending (which I had to go to the website to read)

The book starts off with 2 little sisters being best friends but very different - we learn about Valerie's love for her best friend peter who had to leave town in a hurry.

Every Full moon a family from the village is selected to set out a sacrifice for the werewolf (ie, goat, chicken )

Well when it was Valerie's family's turn to set out the sacrifice, they could only afford to let go the family pet - a goat. But Valerie didn't want to let it go. So she snuck out of her house to go rescue the goat. But what she saw was pure horror - the Wolf. It looked over at her, and Valerie Shut her eyes and played dead. She heard some awful noise, then silence. When she forced herself to look up, both the wolf, and the goat were gone. The wolf sparing her life.

10 years later .... Valerie and her sister Lucie and a bunch of other girls were getting together to work in the field with the young men their age. The girls flirted and gossiped. It was then that Valerie spied Peter among the group of men. She tried to catch his eyes but he refused to pay any attention to any of the girls. He was very focused on his work...

Finally at lunch time, standing in line, he did catch Valerie's eyes and then he turned and left. She thought maybe he didn't recognize her, or maybe he didn't want to .

Once the evening came to an end, he slipped up behind her asking her to watch for his signal. Then the guys crossed the river to their camp grounds leaving the girls to camp.

After giving the parent in charge some herbal tea to help her sleep, the girls grabbed a hidden boat and rowed over to the boys side of the lake.

Valerie saw Peter's signal (a candle flickering) and followed him.

Going for a little horse ride in silence. Then the owner of the horse yelled at them to bring back their horse :) Valerie told Peter she would wait for him to sneak the horse back.

When all of a sudden she heard the deep throat of a growl, knowing the full moon was the night before, she didn't realize why the werewolf would be out again. looking up she saw the red moon (aka , blood moon)

Then all hell broke out and people scattered and ran.

Lucie taking off with Prudence, and Valerie jumping in the boat with Rose, no one know where everyone was, but they just knew they had to get home..

In the morning, Valerie got a bucket of water and went to the men's work area (cutting trees) and she spotted Peter. He pulled her over to the side where no one could see them together, and that's when he told her that he heard she was to be married to Henery (the rich guy that all the girls wanted to be with ... including her sister)

Valerie was shocked and begged Peter to run away with her. Just as they were about to turn and run towards a horse that was left out , she heard the bells - Bong ... Bong ... Bong ... (3 ment death) BONG ... (four ment wolf attack) Gasp!!! Who died!?!?!?

Ok well that's about as far as the beginning goes. Once the middle kicks up a bit and everyone is running around it gets a little crazy.

The book was a decent read. It really kept my attention. It was hard to decide if she was going to stay with Henry or Peter - I really liked them both. They both seemed decent enough :) The Werewolf attacks kept coming and people started dying. It got really intense towards the end - but instead of finding out who the wolf was, or ending the book with a decent ending - the book just stops.... it says "Is this truly the end of the Valerie's story?" Then it gives you the http://www.redridinghoodbook.com/ website to find out.

I had read around and found out that the book stopped there because the author didn’t' want to give away the ending of the movie. So once the movie hit the theaters, the Author posted the "Bonus Chapter" on her website, which is where the final ending happens.

The movie comes out on DVD on Tuesday June 14th - I haven't seen the movie yet, and wanted to wait on the last Chapter until after I saw the movie - but... I'm not big on surprises :) I peeked :) But I'm looking forward to the movie -I heard it did pretty well in the theaters, so I'm really hoping they did a good job with it , and I hope they had a different ending too :)