Red | Alison Cherry | Review

Red | Alison Cherry | Review

• Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Image via Goodreads
Felicity St. John lives in Scarletville, a town where redheads hold all the power and girls like Felicity rule the school. What her classmates don’t know is that Felicity is hiding a big secret – her natural hair colour is strawberry blonde and if anyone in Scarletville found out it would be a huge scandal.

All Felicity wants is to be crowned Miss Scarlet and use the pageant prize money to pursue her dreams of heading off to art school next year, something her overpowering mother would strongly disapprove of. Unfortunately for Felicity a fellow (non-redhead) student has discovered her big secret and is about to blackmail her, forcing Felicity to let go of her art school dream and damage relationships with those closest to her.

The unique premise of this book sounded like a lot of fun and with other reviewers comparing it to a mix of Drop Dead Gorgeous & Mean Girls, both films I love, I was certainly looking forward to finding out if Red would be as good as those. The book, intended as satire, looks at discrimination – in this case redheads are considered more important than those with other hair colours – and explores the lengths at which someone will go to hide a secret.

Raised by a pushy redheaded mother, who has been taking her to a secret salon to get her hair dyed red since she was only a baby, Felicity struggles to come to terms with the idea of living in a place where her "red cred" is irrelevant. As a protagonist I found Felicity difficult to route for throughout the book. Although I could completely understand that her extreme attitude was due to her upbringing and surroundings I still struggled to believe in the character.

Although I appreciate the idea behind Red, commenting on real-life issues, I unfortunately found the concept a little too difficult to buy into which left me unable to really enjoy the story.

Despite not falling in love with this book myself I do think it would probably be a fun, quick read for younger teens.

*Review copy c/o Netgalley