Stacia in Progress

A VERY TWISTED FAIRY TALE INDEED."You pretend to be this rough, tough, ass-kicking Enforcer," his tone maddeningly condescending. "But beneath it all you're just a scared little girl who's still running from the Big Bad Wolf."3.5 stars. Red could probably win some sort of award for its cast of bizarrely screwed up characters. Snow White's a floozy? Who would've thought it? Pure as the driven snow, my ass.Can someone with influence please get the publisher to change out the cover for this book? I was half-expecting an Urban Fantasy erotic book. Instead, I wound up reading something which vaguely resembles suspense. Sure, the cast of characters are fairy tale characters, but the story itself follows some sort of mystery/suspense formula. It all read less "once upon a time," and more "modern day." Because everything sort of snowballed into a suspense vibe, I found myself somewhat disappointed. Suspense is not one of my favorite genres and has to really wow me in order to get me excited. BUT...BUT...I will say that I found some interest in reading this author's voice. Her sense of humor is a bit tongue-in-cheek with a snarky bite, which was extremely enjoyable to read at first. My one tiny complaint about the humor is that it started to choke out the story for a short time when each new character or instance was delivered with a funny accompanying bit. I spent my time during the early part of the book waiting for something to happen. There was a point where I almost quit out on the story altogether because I was starting to get tired of the non-stop parade of snappy character introductions. I am glad that I stuck with it though because there was a leveling out after a while and things finally started rolling. Even though there was the planned "murder mystery," I ended up getting along with the story in the end.Shuddering from the sudden chill, I went inside to prepare for my date, wishing my intended companion was not the in-your-face sexy vampire I was going to meet but rather the shadowy enigma who had so recently darkened my doorstep.Red was an okay lead character, but I have to admit having more of a draw to Nate Grimm (a.k.a. Grimm Reaper). Death. Is. A. Love. Interest. *thumbs up*Since we did have all of the characters trotted out for our observation, one could only guess that we'll see a return of the more colorful ones. Gran turned out to be one of my early favorites."You think these gentlemen care what kind of panties you wear?" Gran said, shooing me into the bathroom.If you'd seen any of my status updates, I made a couple of notes about the side characters. I'm sort of hoping for a Jabberwocky comeback in future books! But in case you missed those...here's a couple other examples.For people like Dave who couldn't control their more questionable proclivities for very long, Happy Endings was pretty much a foregone conclusion."Probably the only name you'll recognize - Alfred Simon.""Simple Simon?" I said, tossing the photo back onto the pile. "Poor little guy. Last I heard he was holding down a good job delivering soda to restaurants or something. Who'd want to hurt him?"So there you have it - a story which is one part fairy tale gone wrong, one part comedy of errors, and a whole lot of mystery. If you're okay with Red being less UF and more suspense, you'll probably enjoy this book even more than I did. Either way, I'm interested enough to check out book 2. Maybe I'll get to see some hot death-on-riding hood action.