Red Hood's Revenge

Pros: quick action, fascinating rewrites of several more fairy tales, realistic characters

Cons: have to read the first two books in the series in order to properly understand this one

Taken from the back of the book, because it's written so well: Roudette's story was a simple one. A red cape. A wolf. A hunter. Her mother told her she would be safe, so long as she kept to the path. But sometimes the path leads to dark places.

After living through a traumatic childhood event, Roudette has become an assassin. Her current target is Talia, known as Sleeping Beauty.

This is the third of Mr. Hines' princess novels, and the strongest to date. He builds upon the foundations of the previous books, deepening the established relationships, so new readers would do well to read those first.

If you think you know Talia's story based on The Stepsister Scheme, think again. We get to see her homeland, and someone dear to Talia's heart. We also learn that her understanding of the events surrounding her cursed sleep are not as simple as she believed.

The book has a lot of good fight scenes, some romance and a lot of conflicted emotions.