Review of Chasing The Red Queen

LindoM · Post by **LindoM** » 05 Nov 2021, 07:50

[Following is a volunteer review of "Chasing The Red Queen" by Karen Glista.]

2 out of 4 stars

Share This Review

Donja Bellanger is an unhappy goth girl who is about to turn 18. Her life seems to be spiralling out of control. Her mother is remarrying, the family is moving far away from her childhood home and friends.

Luckily, the new place is turning out to be better than Donja expected and she is finally getting along with her step-sister Makayla. The new area, however, has recently been having a series of gruesome murders of young women, and one of the investigators, Torin Mancini, knows more than he lets on.

While out with Makayla and Makayla's boyfriend, Donja and Torin lock eyes. The moment he lays eyes on Donja, he is drawn to her in a way that he has not been in a long time. He persues Donja and takes her on an unforgettable journey of romance.

The following review is for the book Chasing the Red Queen by Karen Glista. I will begin by discussing the parts of the book that I liked and disliked. Next, I will discuss my general comments about the book. Then I will discuss the book's formatting and the target audience. Finally, I will add the overall rating and reasoning.

There were three aspects of the book that I enjoyed. Firstly, the author did a phenomenal job at capturing the voices and turmoils of the teenagers. Everything felt as dramatic and life-altering as I felt in my teen years. Although I liked that the characters felt like real teenagers, it got a bit uncomfortable when Donja's love interest was a mature supernatural being. I felt that there was a weird power dynamic that I did not like. The innocence of Donja and the maturity of her love interest was not something I enjoyed being romanticised. I get that she is of age, but her thoughts still felt juvenile to me.

Secondly, I liked that the book mentioned things in real life. It helped bring the characters to life and was a clever technique as there was no need to explain why such a demographic would be into such things. For example, the teens would talk about Harry Styles and go to Starbucks a lot. As a reader, you already know that those things are more popular amongst young adults and teens, so this creates a more three-dimensional teenage girl.

Lastly, I really enjoyed the cliffhangers Glista added at the end of each chapter. They created a lot of mystery and made the book hard to put down.

There was just one part of the book I really disliked. The insults used in the book were at times bordering on racist. This really sucked the enjoyed of certain scenes for me. Maybe if the author had added a trigger warning at the beginning of the book, it would have caught me less off guard.

At times, the humour used in this book really went over my head. For example, I did not get why there were so many jokes about Makayla's reliance on Prozac. I found that slightly uncomfortable, even if it is something teenagers would joke about it.

The book was well edited and had no grammatical issues. It was, however, very rushed. It started off slow, adding a lot of detail about Donja's Starbucks runs and life. Then suddenly we hit the romance part, and the storyline gets rushed! There was not enough time given to the development of the relationship between Donja and the different characters. It all seemed forced and unbelievable.

I really cannot say who the target audience for this book is. The mature themes, sexual content and profanity make it unsuitable for a young person. But, the dialogue was so juvenile at times that a young adult would not enjoy it. The mature contents of the book make me lean on recommending it to a mature audience who like crime stories mixed with supernatural, romance and drama.

In conclusion, I did enjoy some aspects of the book, so I give it a 2 out of 4 stars. My rating is lower because one star is taken off because of the racist comment used. The other star is taken off because of how rushed the relationships were between the characters and the jokes on drug reliance.

******
Chasing The Red Queen
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon

Samantha Brehm · Post by **Samantha Brehm** » 09 Nov 2021, 22:24

Thank you for the very insightful review. I find it extremely interesting that this is marketed as teenagers, but the mature themes and content make it seem like it needs to be adults only. I am not a fan of insulting using mental health and drugs to combat mental health so thank you for including that in the review.