Thank You very much to the publisher – Harper Teen for the review copy.
ISBN13: 978-0062411624
Genre: YA
Release date: 05 08 2021
Price*: Kindle £6.99 (GBP)/ Hardback £11.95 (GBP)
Kindle $9.99 (USD)/ Hardback $12.99 (USD)
Pages: ~ 368
My rating: I liked it.
You can get this book here:
Amazon UK
Bookshop.org
What I learned from this book: Don't take in strange children you find. 
Description of the book: For as long as sixteen-year-old Adele can remember, the village of Oakvale has been surrounded by the dark wood—a forest filled with terrible monsters. A forest that light itself cannot penetrate.
Unlike her fellow villagers, Adele cannot avoid the dark wood. Adele is one of a long line of guardians: women who secretly take on the form of a wolf, in order to protect their village. But when accepting her fate means giving up the boy she loves, abandoning the future she imagined for herself, and breaking her own moral code, she must decide how far she is willing to go to keep her neighbors safe.
How this book made me feel: A very different Red Riding Hood version of a book. It is dark, magical and filled with monsters.
The protagonist in this novel is Adele, and the book is told from her perspective. Adele is a teenager, that is in love with a guardian of a city, and all she wants is to get married and live in the house with her boy. One day her life turns upside down, she finds out that she is from a very long line of female protectors, and that it is her destiny to secretly protect the village. She can not share this with her hunter boy, because the men they marry are there to help them, not try and kill them. She needs to learn to love a stranger who trained his whole life to assist her. Adele is torn between two boys, and her life is even more difficult after she finds a young boy in the woods.
I really liked Adele, she is a very confused but interesting personality. She is constantly battling between what she wants and what is expected of her. I really liked the characters chosen for this book, they remind me of people from the little settlements back in the times when Kings and Queens used to rule the land. ( I know they still do, but if you watched/read The Last Kingdom or The Wheel Of Time, you know what I am talking about).
The narrative of this novel did not really impress me. I missed more action and intrigue, all the events in this book were predictable and nothing really stood out. There were few references to Red Riding Hood, but the whole narrative was completely different. The topics discussed in this novel were duty, monsters, being different in a small village, secrets, unexpected powers and responsibility, empowering women vs men etc.
The storytelling was very easy flowing and enjoyable. The setting of this book is surrounded by darkness and filled with various monsters. The chapters have medium length and I was quite engrossed in this novel. The ending of this book was very unexpected, but I really enjoyed how this book was concluded.
So, to sum up, this book is completely different from Red Riding Hood. The characters are likeable, a little bit bland but the narrative is very dark and quite mysterious. I enjoyed this story and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fantasy set in times of little settlements when you needed to travel for weeks in order to go to the next village. It is cute, dark and mysterious. I hope you will like it. 
Thank you for your time! 
About the author: Rachel Vincent is the New York Times bestselling author of several pulse-pounding series for teens and adults. A former English teacher and a champion of the serial comma, Rachel has written more than twenty novels and remains convinced that writing about the things that scare her is the cheapest form of therapy. Rachel shares her home in Oklahoma with two cats, two teenagers, and her husband, who's been her number one fan from the start.
Website: http://www.rachelvincent.com / Twitter: @rachelkvincent.
*-the price was taken from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com on the current date. The price might change at the time of your purchase. The links used in this post for book purchases are affiliates.
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