Christina HenryRecensioni

A Dark and Haunting Exploration through the Old City

Alice by Christina Henry is a haunting and atmospheric rendition of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale that left me both intrigued and conflicted. I offer this work solid four stars because of its fresh take on a familiar subject, brilliant weaving of horror themes, and engaging people that inhabit its pages.



Alice ♦ Christina Henry

Opinion

One of the most memorable aspects of Alice is the weaving of terror all over the story. Henry expertly creates a dark and frightening mood throughout Old City, providing a haunting backdrop for the characters‘ quest. I was held on the edge of my seat by the evocative descriptions of the spooky surroundings and the unpleasant meetings with other citizens of Old City. The author’s ability to combine the fantastical and the hideous provided dimension to the plot, making it a really immersive experience for enthusiasts of both the fantasy and horror genres.

However, my appreciation of the story was muted by Alice’s character. While her naïveté is reasonable given the circumstances, her choices and decision-making annoyed me throughout the novel. Her tendency to trust too quickly and make hasty choices detracted from the character’s overall plausibility. On the contrary, I was captivated to Hatcher, the male protagonist. His enigmatic demeanor, complicated past, and palpable sense of danger that surrounds him gave complexity to the story and kept me engrossed in what was unfolding.

The Old City location is a definite standout in Alice. Henry’s depiction of this bleak and desolate scenery is captivating. The novel’s overall sense of dread is enhanced by the novel’s dark and winding paths, looming shadows, and continual sense of danger. Old City is brilliantly established as a character in its own right by the author, and its presence lingers long after the final page is turned.

While the general language style is vivid and matches the novel’s somber tone, there were times when I struggled with the text. Some paragraphs seemed unnecessarily dense, and the tempo suffered as a result. Despite these minor artistic issues, the fascinating plot and the strength of the atmospheric components ultimately triumphed.

Conclusion

In the end, Christina Henry’s Alice is a fascinating and evocative retelling of a classic tale. The horror aspects, compelling characters, and unsettling atmosphere make it a must-read for dark fantasy aficionados. While some readers may be put off by Alice’s naïveté, the entire experience is definitely worth the excursion into the dark depths of Old City.


This review was first published at The Art of Reading.

A Gripping and Unforgettable Journey

Christina Henry's The Girl in Red is a magnificent and captivating work of literature that captured my attention and emotions from the first page. This gritty, dystopian adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood carries you on an arduous, five-star adventure that you will not wish to terminate.



The Girl in Red ♦ Christina Henry

Opinion

Christina Henry has created a terrifyingly distinct yet eerily familiar environment. Her writing skill and relentless tension combine to create a tale that is a perfect storm of emotion, terror, and unadulterated humanity. She creates a visceral and evocative post-apocalyptic setting, and Red, her protagonist, is a wonderfully complicated figure who defies the expectations of a conventional heroine.

I was captivated by Red's dangerous trip into a world full of unimaginable atrocities as soon as I started reading it. She is an inspirational figure because of her intelligence, fortitude, and tenacity in the face of unbelievable odds. It's truly amazing how well Henry was able to capture Red's essence.

The suspense and mood of the story are evident as you turn page after page with apprehension, eager to find out what is around the next dark corner. Christina Henry writes with a razor's edge, a vivid sense of place, and a wealth of provocative ideas on morality, human nature, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Conclusion

The Girl in Red delves deeply into themes of identity, survival, and familial ties. You will continue to be moved by this story long after you have turned the last page. I firmly believe that Henry has written a contemporary masterpiece, and anyone searching for an engrossing and remarkable read should pick up this book. It deserves every honor it gets; five stars are not enough to do it right.


This review was first published on The Art of Reading.

Ich muss gestehen, ich kenne die urspüngliche Legende von Sleepy Hollow nicht. Trotzdem hat mir dieses Buch viel Spaß gemacht!

Insgesamt hat das Buch mir gut gefallen, wenn es auch keine Neuerzählung ist. Eher ein "was danach geschah" mit einer ziemlichen brutalen Version der Original-Geschichte.
Das Ende fand ich allerdings irgendwie lieblos und ziemlich hopplahopp, dafür gibt es einen Stern Abzug.

So wahnsinnig düster fand ich das jetzt nicht... Aber wirklich gut geschrieben und eine tolle Geschichte!

Wow!

(3.25 Stars)

I liked this retelling and continuing of the original. It adds a lot of grit, darkness, and backstory that isn't in the original. I won't say that I loved it... but I did find it interesting enough to continue with the series. I do like the premise, and I love fanfiction like this, like Gregory Maguire, but the characters... even while you learn more of their stories still seem a little "flat" (I don't know how else to describe it).

This book started out slow for me. So slow in fact that I put it down for 2 weeks before I was like, 'oh yeah, that book, let's give it another try.' Once I got past the boring-ness and righteousness of Celia, and to the nitty gritty where she definitively finds out that something is not right, that is when I got into it. Her part also spent too much time describing things which bores me; I would rather build things up in my mind. I don't need you spending pages describing the woods and house to me. Give me a little something-something, but don't overdo it.

The story that saved this book for me was Maggie's. The obstacle course setting, plus the characters, all made for a good time. Allie's was alright, but I was kind of expecting more from it, especially considering the author made Allie such a horror buff. I guess I just thought the story was going to be scarier.

I also didn't like the ending. Celia had to go and ruin it again! I wanted there to be punishment, consequences, suffering, maybe some blood, not that. I suppose the story started out lame so it had to end lame too.

The 23 short stories in this book revolve around the folklore of Baba Yaga. The stories demonstrate the ability to adapt a narrative around a subject. They are quick reads and authors share their own styles. It helps to understand the folklore of Baba Yaga to follow the context.


I received a free copy and am leaving a review voluntarily.
Thank you to Hidden Gems Books and author.

I have yet to read a book by Christina Henry that I have not enjoyed. Good Girls Don’t Die combines my love of strong female characters, cozy mysteries, horror, and suspense (also dystopian adventure… although I’m not a huge fan) and put it into a book that I didn’t know I wanted to read.

Stories were passed down to help people learn and as warnings, and I feel like this story, while filled with lots of pop culture references, is there to help girls/women not only realize the terrors in this world, but that they are strong, men will always underestimate them, and if they really do come together (and not let the patriarch/themselves get pitted against other women) they have a fighting chance.
Okay, now that I got the feminism part out of me, and something that I always enjoy looking at more deeply when I read Henry’s novels, let's get to the more fun stuff.

I feel like most readers (or TV/Movie watchers) have said or thought, “What a fool! I could solve the mystery/survive the killer/win the dystopian competition way better/faster than the main character.”
In Good Girls Don’t Die, the main characters get the chance, but the threat is real and there will be violence and death and they may not survive.

The book is broken into four sections, and while it started a bit slow, mainly because I had no idea what was going on and I was getting my footing with the book. But towards the middle of section one, the book took off, and just kept getting better.

If you are looking for a fast read that probably covers at least one of the genres you enjoy, along with some great woman power and some feminism (If you really want to think that deep about it), then I highly recommend Good Girls Don’t Die… and really any book by Christina Henry.

In Christina Henry's latest thriller, three different women find themselves precariously trapped and living inside their favorite genres — mystery, horror & dystopian — but how, and by whom? I enjoyed this original and exciting twist on the thriller novel. I went into this book not knowing much about the plot, and that's the best way to enjoy it.

I greatly admired the bravery and smarts of the heroines. I would have been freaking out had I been in any one of their situations, but they showed great resolve. I was on pins and needles waiting to see how their stories fit together. My one complaint had to do with the ending. I felt like it was abrupt and didn't answer nearly enough questions about the wildness I had just experienced! An epilogue would have been a nice addition. Still, I found this thriller to be refreshingly original and well written.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book. Thoughts are my own.

Overall this was a good book. I'd give it 4 out 5 stars. It ties into the origin story (The legend of Sleepy Hollow by Irving) quite well. It has Brom and Kat and even Ichabod is around. It revolves around Brom and Kat's grandchild. It's a whirlwind of a story and at first I wasn't sure what I thought, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the story. Plus, that cover is BOMB.

Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry reworks the Peter Pan legend and turns it into a dark fantasy as we learn that Captain Hook was originally Jamie, Peter’s best friend, but he grew progressively disenchanted by Peter’s manipulation, ego and controlling ways. As he learns to love Peter less, he also starts to grow up and want more than to simply be a boy and play all the time.

Peter finds and brings stray boys to the magical island, but it is Jamie who really looks after them, and sees to their safety. Peter doesn’t really care if a boy dies, he just goes and gets a new one but when he brought Charlie home, Jamie was concerned as firstly Charlie was too young and secondly, from things that Charlie tells him, he had a loving home and a mother. All too soon Peter is bored by Charlie and looking for ways to get rid of him. Peter is also insanely jealous of Jamie, and doesn’t want him spending his time caring for the others.

The author delivers a gruesome story that has a constant feeling of menace. As it builds to an exciting conclusion, we see how Jamie is forced to join the pirates and become the grown-up hunter of Peter Pan rather than the companion. A interesting take on the original story with plenty of violence and gore.

A disabled, mixed-race, 20yr-old girl with a prosthetic leg is determined to survive a deadly pandemic and is travelling cross-country to get to her grandmother's rural house where she might be safe.

"She asks if he talks to me. I tell her the truth: yes, or more like he chats—because he talks less and less, he’s disappearing into the Internet; Marco is letters that titillate, and sometimes he just disappears without waiting for an answer—but that he never tells me what’s going on, what he’s feeling, what he wants."

I tagged it horror but maybe only half the stories fit into what you'd typically call horror - most are realist with only a quick encounter with something maybe supernatural, or the intrusion of the very real horrors of real life. I came into it with the wrong expectations because of the genre tag but as I got used to it I found it compelling. Quite a few stories not only lack resolution but even a sense of what exactly happened - we get a dip into the other side, the terrifying stuff that underpins middle class normality, but we only get to see the horror from the edges. There are very obvious constant reoccurring themes - great poverty and slums, the class divide, the legacy of the dictatorships (including Paraguay), the oppression of women (all of these stories are told from the perspective of women). Even when the themes are obvious and the "horror" level isn't that strong, all the stories are properly creepy and stick with you. It brings up your uneasiness around the things you can't quite see, that are bred from capitalism and the patriarchy and have to be suppressed and fenced out in case they take you. Great writing.

A delightful, spooky book that perfectly captures the isolated, superstitious character of one of literature’s most famous fictional towns, Sleepy Hollow. Henry provides the best of both worlds, building on the lore of Washington Irving’s work while adding a modern, fresh interpretation of the characters and story. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I really wish I'd read what this was about before beginning haha.

I liked the story, the retelling of Red Riding Hood was a great conveyance for this story. I loved the way Ms. Henry included LOADS of minorities within this character.

I really enjoyed this! It took a while to get going and I kept getting the boys’ names confused, but I loved this take!

I loved this so much! It was riveting and twisty and got my pulse racing! Great story!

So let's start this of by saying, that I am absolutely a fairy tale fan. I adored fairy tales as a child and my first exposure to them was not via Disney movies, but via the Grimm tales and other story books, as well as the fairy tale films in public TV around Christmas time and winter in general (I am German and fantasy retelling stories are like sand at the sea here, we have dozens upon dozens of retellings and every possible version everywhere). However, since Peter Pan is not a Grimm fairy tale, nor by Hans Christian Andersen nor Irish, he was never really an interest of mine and the only reason I read this book, is because a friend borrowed to me.

And yet I was absolutely not disappointed or bored once during the read. I felt like the ending was a little bit rushed, but that does not take away from the beauty of the writings style and the elaborate picture of the Island that Henry paints here.

Jamie is an enticing and fun character. His style is easy to read and yet the vivid descriptions and his dual opinions and feelings regarding death (not having problems with gore or violence and yet struggling with his grief) let the writing become full of life.

The story itself is of course fascinating, as it tells a much more darker and violent tale than the one Disney has children believing. And while I knew about the dark origins of Peter Pan in "Little White Bird" the way the author span the magic of the Island and Peters obsessions with protagonist Jamie felt refreshing and incredibly well made.

One thing I felt was kind off forced and unnecessary was Jamies little crush on Sally. Sally as a whole was perfectly fine as Sal in my eyes, and it didn't add anything to the story that they suddenly fell in love and she was secretly a girl. The opposite actually, I think it took away, because to me it seems like Henry just absolutely HAD to force in romance so she HAD to force in a girl character. Protecting his boys was in my eyes motivation enough for Jamie and so it kind off took me out of the story to read that little "romance" subplot

All in all a fun, solid read. I liked it.

Wow. This was awesome.

This can pretty much be read as the story of a paranoid schizophrenic who has escaped from a max security mental hospital and is rapidly withdrawing after being heavily medicated for years on anti-psychotics. It truly has the hall marks of full blown psychosis.

Of course, you can read it as a fantasy novel that bears no relevance to the real world if you don't want to think about why people in full blown psychosis due to rapid withdrawal of anti-psychotic meds go around killing people.

Whichever way you want to read this, it's a fantastic re-telling of the Alice in Wonderland story.

Straight onto Red Queen now. So looking forward to more of Alice and Hatcher.

I really enjoyed reading 'Alice' and was expecting a bit more of the same, but this book feels quite different.

Whereas Alice had me feeling like i was reading the adventure of an escaped patient from a max security mental hospital who hasn't had her meds and has gone into full blown psychosis, 'Red Queen' read far more like normal fantasy, probably due to Alice finding her magical abilities in this book.

Both books have been great in their own way and i've thoroughly enjoyed reading this wonderful new take on 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Red Queen' is a good ending to Alice and Hatcher's tale.

I look forward to reading more from Christina in the future.

Another great story from Christina.

I certainly feel rewarded for reading 'The Little Mermaid' and 'The Fabulous Showman' before diving straight into this, as they do give one the feeling and attitude of the age and thereby give this story a sense of genuine realism.   So i would certainly recommend reading both before hand if you're looking for a more immersive experience from this story.

Reading a work of fiction that contains real historical characters, in their real historical places and time, while only twisting the factual narrative where needed to make the fictional narrative fit was, at times, quite emotionally disturbing.   One can truly feel for Amelia as though she is a genuine historical person, because all the people around her were genuine historical people.

For example...   Barnum did put a huge tank into the museum, but he put whales in it.   And the way in which he treats the mermaid in this story is not too dissimilar to how he treated the whales.   One can almost read this story as the story of those whales, and have Amelia's voice speak for them.   Sadly, the whales never had a voice, nor did they have someone like Levi to champion their corner, and all suffered and died serving the ignorance of the masses and Barnum's bank account.   It made me feel genuinely uncomfortable, and moved in ways that an ordinary work of fiction simply doesn't.   It's quite the experience, and one i certainly recommend.

As with all of Christina's books, the writing is wonderful, flowing, and, for me, perfectly edited.   A wonderful read.   It really does capture the feeling and attitude of the age.

Christina's next book 'The Girl in Red' is out on 18th June 2019.   I'm so looking forward to having a 'Little Red Riding Hood' journey.

Having read all of Christina's previous books -- which i've extremely enjoyed -- i had very high hopes for this book: alas, it was not to be.

So "Red", our protagonist and narator, is on a journey to her Grandma's house across several hundred miles of the USA after a coughing plague has culled nearly all the people: basically it's a post-apocalyptic survival story.

And the whole book is taken up with the first half of this journey until there's an endoparasitoid-bursting-out-the-chest-thing -- WTF!!!   Remember Alien and Sigourney Weaver?   Yeah, that's what an endoparasitoid-bursting-out-the-chest-thing is.

The army turn up and the soldier guy who chases the endoparasitoid-bursting-out-the-chest-things admits to Red that the government made it in a lab.   He lets Red carry on with her journey instead of taking her to the quarantine camp, and in a few pages Red arrives at her Grandma's.   It's like the second half of Red's journey didn't happen, like she was just magically transported to her Grandma's.   And no explanation as to the endoparasitoid and why the government would make such a thing.

And it's this one single, silly, ridiculous idea of an endoparasitoid thrown into the story with no purpose whatsoever that completely ruins the book -- and also the second half of Red's journey being skipped over as though it didn't really happen, or was in a completely different world to the first half.

We don't even get to know how Grandma has been surviving or anything.

Basically, the ending is utter garbage and totally ruins the whole story.   It's just a total nonsensical ending.

It just left me which such a disappointment.   This is far below Christina's usual standard.

Ho hum: i suppose we all have to write something crap once in a while.

After my recent dive into Peter Pan's history i was so looking forward to this.

And i can happily say it was everything, and more, than i hoped it would be.

Everything in the sense that it was up there with at the level of 'Alice', but instead of the violent schizo escaping from a high security mental hospital, rapidly withdrawing from her anti-psychotic meds leading to a total psychotic meltdown while running around town with a mad axeman on a murder spree, this one's delving into the realms of psychopathy. Of course, like 'Alice' you can just read it as a straight forward story and not get too into the mental health side of what's going on, but it's all there if you want some depth to it. Christina is one brilliant writer.

That's everything i hoped it would be, the more than i hoped it would be was the similarity between Peter Pan and his Island and a person and place i found myself in several years ago. It was at times quite disturbing in how similar it all was, to really understand how the protagonist, Jamie, felt and to be able to put myself in his place, because i'd found myself in a very similar situation with a very similar person. But as much as it was disturbing it was so because it was so incredibly cathartic and i'm really pleased to have had the experience of reading this book, so thank you Christina for that as well.

On top of all that, i certainly felt it showed respect for J.M. Barries' work, and built on that really well giving it all a whole new dimension to consider, one only hinted at in the original works, and i definitely recommend reading those three original books by James before embarking on this one -- although this can be read as stand alone if you so wish, i just feel you'd be missing out a great deal by doing so.

For now though, this brings an end to my current Peter Pan binge, but i'm sure i'll be back to Neverland in the future, there's just too much been written around the original story for me to ignore for long.

Christina's page.