{"id":1608,"date":"2018-11-23T12:39:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T17:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2018-10-08T20:41:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T00:41:07","slug":"book-review-sisters-red-by-jackson-pearce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1608","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-0316068680<\/p>\n

Available: Hardcover, Kindle ebook<\/p>\n

Sisters Red\u00a0<\/em>has a rocket blast of an opening, with a chaotic, first person view of a vicious werewolf attack on sisters Scarlett and Rosie. They survived, but their grandmother was brutally murdered, and Scarlett, in defending them, was badly scarred and lost an eye. Now Scarlett is obsessed with hunting and killing werewolves, called Fenris, who prey on pretty, vulnerable young girls. Rosie has been trained to hunt, but doesn\u2019t have the passion for the hunt that her sister does. The story is told with chapters alternating between Scarlett\u2019s and Rosie\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Enter the woodsman\u2019s son. Silas, Scarlett\u2019s trusted partner, has returned from a yearlong absence, and he doesn\u2019t seem as invested in the hunt as he used to be. There\u2019s a problem on the horizon, though- the Fenris seem to be getting organized. They\u2019re looking for a \u201cpotential\u201d, a male who has the, well, potential to become a Fenris if he\u2019s bitten during a certain time. Scarlett, Rosie, and Silas don\u2019t know who the potential is or how to identify him, but if they can, they\u2019ll be able to use him as bait to eliminate large numbers of the Fenris. To make discovery of the potential more likely, they take off for the city. The move shakes things up. Scarlett, the expert hunter, is unable to successfully bait the Fenris with so many beautiful girls around. Silas pushes Rosie to expand her life beyond the hunt. And, predictably, Rosie and Silas fall in love. I would have expected the action to pick up in the city, as the critical time for identifying the potential approached, but instead, the pace of the story is dragged down by their fruitless searches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pearce\u2019s attempt to retell the Red Riding Hood story in an original way was enough to get me to suspend a whole lot of disbelief, but there does come a point at which it\u2019s just too much. Two teenage girls who drop out of high school and live alone in the middle of nowhere after their grandmother is murdered are not going to go unnoticed, and Scarlett\u2019s ignorance of Rosie and Silas\u2019s relationship, when they\u2019re sharing a small apartment, is difficult to swallow. There\u2019s also an \u201cick\u201d factor, which is that Silas is twenty-one and Rosie is sixteen. Pearce soft-pedals it, but even though he is a friend, Silas is also a predator, an adult taking advantage of Rosie\u2019s confusion and mixed feelings, and this is never really addressed(although it certainly plays into the story).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The ending was unsatisfactory to me. While the climax is fast-paced and packed with action and intense emotion, there\u2019s no real character growth or surprise when you get to the very end. Throughout the book, Scarlett refers to the Allegory of the Cave, describing herself as one of the few people who step outside the cave and see the light- the danger of the Fenris. But as the book ended, and Scarlett continued on, single-minded and unable to move beyond her obsession with the hunt, it seemed that the author had left her in the dark. Still, it\u2019s a compelling story, and one that has provided me with food for thought. Certainly, it has more substance than many of the other popular supernatural titles for teens inhabiting the stacks. Recommended.for public library YA collections and high school library media centers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contains: Graphic violence, references to rape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010 ISBN: 978-0316068680 Available: Hardcover, Kindle ebook Sisters Red\u00a0has a rocket blast of an opening, with a chaotic, first person view of a vicious werewolf attack on sisters Scarlett and Rosie. They survived, but their grandmother was brutally murdered, and Scarlett, in defending them, was badly scarred and lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,229,20],"tags":[299],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-shapeshifters","category-ya-books","tag-jackson-pearce"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-pW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}