SCARLET MOON

A lively re-imagining of Red Riding Hood for romantic older girls. When Ruth was small, a wolf with green eyes attacked her: her brother saved her, but she has never forgotten. Her brother Stephen and her cousin Peter go off to the Crusades; Ruth remains, assisting her blacksmith father and visiting her grandmother, who lives in the forest. Ruth loves to learn the lore of plants and herbs from her grandmother even as she loves learning the working of metal from her father, but her grandmother has been banished from the village for fear of witchcraft. Peter comes back from war broken and Stephen has died. A local noble, William, Earl of Lauton, finds Ruth at the shop and far from being put off by her doing men’s work, is strangely drawn to her, as Ruth is to him, even when she notices he has the same green eyes as the wolf of her nightmares. Viguié neatly weaves werewolf tales, a scarlet cloak lined with Ruth’s brother’s armor, a sentient forest, and a certain amount of passionate kissing into her narrative without getting silly or stupid. Teen girls will swoon. (Fiction. YA)