Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

I finished this one a while ago, but I needed to put some distance between me and the book because I wasn't sure how I felt about it. And in truth, I still don't know how I feel.

When I started reading The Red Trilogy by Paul Kane, I was in the mood for a traditional werewolf novel, even better if it was a series (or in this case, a trilogy), and that's not what I got.

You might think when you start reading this book that you're going to get a reimaging of the old children's tale of Little Red Riding Hood, and you'd be right--if the Big, Bad Wolf was a werewolf. The problem is, the first "book" in this trilogy is short. Very short. To the point where it feels more like a novella or novelette.

It's in the second "book" where the confusion starts. We're introduced to Rachel Daniels, an aspiring actress who's working as a homecare aide until her big break. She has an encounter with the beast and she gets eaten. But then we see her running around, alive, and being wooed by this guy who's actually a hunter on the trail of the beast. What we find out during the course of the book, and this happens early enough into the book that I don't consider it a spoiler, is this "werewolf" can take the form of anyone it has eaten, and the only way to can see the beast's true nature is by looking at its reflection in a mirror. Now we've seen the Rachel beast kill someone, but at the same time, we've seen Rachel in the company of someone else. So did Rachel survive the werewolf attack? You wouldn't think so since the beast is able to assume her form. But if the beast had eaten her, how can she be up and running around? It's all explained at the end of Book 2, but the explanation is so convoluted it will leave your head spinning.

In Book 3, we jump to the future and the werewolf apocalypse.

This book took me longer than usual to read, and to be honest, once I realized this wasn't the traditional werewolf novel(s) I was looking for, I almost put it aside. More than once.

The question you probably want an answer to is, Is it a bad book? And the answer is---Yes. And no. Yes, in the fact that I feel the reader is misled into thinking they're getting something other than a classic werewolf tale. And even though the book's description builds it up as a reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, I feel even that falls by the wayside after Book 1. The "No" part of that answer is only speculation on my part because I have to wonder if I would have enjoyed it more had I not gone in with any preconceived notions of what I was expecting.

Other than my overall disappointment with the story, I did feel there were some pacing issues where the story dragged a bit, losing any forward momentum that it had, and I don't feel there was enough character development, at least for me, because I didn't find myself invested in any of them. As a result, I wasn't getting caught up in their story and didn't care if any of them survived to the end. But I don't know how much of this is actual and how much my feelings for the book were influenced by my overall disappointment in the book.Would I recommend it? Based on my experience with it, no, I wouldn't, but again, I don't know how much is my disappointment in not getting what I wanted vs the actual quality of the book. So the only thing I can say is read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions, which you should do with any book, good or bad review. Final rating? 2 stars out of 5.