September is for Red Hoods and Good Books

Did you know that Fairy Tale Central is celebrating a month of Little Red Riding Hood? I won't give all the delicious details away here, since I think you need to head over there and check out all the fun posts yourself. Besides book reviews on RRH retellings, there's also fairytale commentary, author interviews, and more!

However, I will say that my second book review for the site just went live today, so here's the link for that. Cloaked is a shorter, sweet work by Rachel Kovaciny -- and set in the wild west! I've very much enjoyed both of Rachel's books that I've read so far, both of them from her Once Upon a Western fairytale retelling series. (The other was a Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, titled Dancing and Doughnuts.) She did a great job incorporating all the original fairytale elements, and all without magic. Two thumbs up!

And, as part of the FTC Red Riding Hood festivities for this month, I've also published a book review for Girl in the Red Hood by Brittany Fichter on my review blog, KiriBeth. You can check that out here.

Girl in the Red Hood was the very first novel of Brittany's that I've read, and I really enjoyed that one. I'll be honest, I was a bit skeptical going into it, only because I don't know how to approach this fairytale author who shares my last name. When I began publishing my fairytale works, I kept my maiden name of "Fichter" as my pen name, thinking it'd be a unique name that no one else would have. I mean, seriously. How many Fichters do you know? Can you even say the name properly? Probably not (no offense; it's German). Lo and behold, there's another Fichter out there publishing books -- and not only that, she's doing fairytale retellings, too! How uncanny is that? I've taken to calling her "the other Fichter" but I suppose she deserves to be "the first Fichter" since she was publishing books before I was.

Brittany incorporates magic in her books, so that definitely set us apart, but I quickly found out that we both love a lot of the same things in our books: genuine relationships, clean reads, sweet fairytale elements. I was very impressed. And I'm very much looking forward to reading more of her works. I've especially had my eye on her Nutcracker retelling, Clara's Soldier, for a long time now.

Man, all this talk of Red Riding Hood books makes me in the mood to write one. My Little Writer will have my head if I try to do anything now, but I can't help that a slightly gender-swapped retelling with a lumberjack as the lead has been badgering my brain most of this month.

What can I say? September is for red hoods.

What's your favorite Little Red Riding Hood retelling? Have you read either of the books I've reviewed in the links above? Let me know in the comments!

God bless!