Scarlet

Niamh Murphy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun adventure story. It can be read as a stand-alone and I admit I haven’t read the book before it. It was a self-contained story, but I do highly recommend reading the first one before you read this one. It does a decent enough job of filling in some blanks, but I don’t think I fully appreciated the content without actually knowing why certain things are significant. It alludes to the events in the last book and there are continuing character relationships that would have had a bigger impact had I read it. Again though, this didn’t take away from the fun adventure that this book was.

Full Review with Spoilers

I’m a sucker for a sapphic retelling. I don’t have a lot of in-depth knowledge of the source material, but what I do know help to confirm that this book stayed within the spirit of it. It is Book Two of a set and is actually a self contained store, so it can be read without having to read the first one. Despite this, I really wish I had read the first book before reading this one. I wasn’t confused or anything. The author does a good job of sprinkling in enough information about the previous events to update new readers. I never felt like I was getting a recap or an awkward monologue. There are a few things about this book though that I feel would have meant a lot more to me if I had read the other book. Even though I’m aware of the events, I don’t know the ‘how’ in which these events happened. The biggest thing that saddened me was not having the basis for Robyn and Marian’s relationship. I enjoyed it so much, even with it being a minor background story happening alongside the main plot points. I would have liked to have seen how this started though before getting a chance to see the tension between them.

This book was an adventure in every sense of the word. There were some terrific fight scenes and lots of comedic ones as well. I loved the complicated but honorable plans of daring rescues as well. Robyn had a really well developed personality and I really appreciated the humanity she projected through the entire book. She really stuck to her personality and I found every decision to be very believable. The secondary characters were also well fleshed out and really added to the story. I was very fond of Marian, who was sweet and kicked butt in equal parts.

I liked that even though this is part of a retelling, I couldn’t really predict where things were going. Will betraying Robyn and her group more than once was a bit of a surprise and frustrating in a good way. Again, I feel like she also stayed true to her developed character. She was a good central poinf for the story to revolve around.

Overall

This was a great adventure with a a good blend of comedy, adventure and a few heartfelt moments. Highly recommend reading the first one, but I wouldn’t let that stop you from picking this up if given the opportunity.

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ARC provided to me in exchange for an honest review.