Big Bad Wolf

TEST

Big Bad Wolf is a deliciously sexy take on Little Red Riding Hood that held up pretty well for me.

There’s a mansion overlooking the Maine woods and its owner, Wolf Trevelyan, is pretty much the local bogeyman. Rumor has it he killed his first wife on their wedding night, and he’s stayed safely away from Maine ever since. He reportedly lives a life of debauchery in New York, and the folks in the local small town have largely forgotten he even owns property out there.

Molly Kincaid lives a simple life with her widowed mother. Mrs. Kincaid works hard taking in laundry and doing some of the smaller jobs open to a single woman in a rural town of that day. Molly’s life isn’t fancy, but she’s content living with her mother and taking provisions out to her grandmother’s cottage every day or so. Naturally, she has a lovely hooded red cape.

Things change when Molly heads out to her grandmother’s one day and meets up with Wolf in the woods. Wolf clearly has fun toying flirtatiously with Molly. It’s apparent that he intended to be scary or at least off-putting, but sensible Molly meets him head-on. Wolf finds himself intrigued and this starts a series of flirty meetings in the woods. Molly knows the stories about Wolf, but having met him, she’s (correctly) convinced that there must be more to the story.

It’s certainly believable that the sheltered Molly would develop a crush on Wolf. And Wolf finds himself so obsessed with Molly that he can’t get her out of his mind. He proposes to make her a kept woman and Molly turns him down flat. Eventually Wolf proposes marriage, and we are off to the races.

When Wolf initially proposed to make Molly his mistress, I initially had flashbacks to Benedict Bridgerton (who is a total tool, in my estimation) in An Offer from a Gentleman. However, the author handled that plot point a bit better and managed to convince me that Wolf was a tad clueless rather than that Wolf lacked respect for Molly due to the differences in social class.

When the two get married, the relationship gets very interesting. Wolf makes it clear that he is going into this marriage considering it something of a business deal. Molly plays along, but her infatuation starts to turn to love as she spends more time with Wolf, and I liked that she was brave enough to ultimately share her feelings even knowing how Wolf had started things. She’s a bit of a Mary Sue, but I still liked the story, largely because I enjoyed seeing Wolf fall for her.

This is a late 90s romance, so in addition to a Mary Sue heroine, we also have charming urchins and some of the other plot points that cropped up a lot around that time period. In Ms. Jones’ hands, they’re less cringe than in other books I recall from my college days, but still be aware.

Big Bad Wolf isn’t perfect, but it is a fun take on the Red Riding Hood story, and it ended up being a very enjoyable romance.

Buy it at Amazon or your local independent retailer

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Reviewed by Lynn Spencer

Grade: B+

Book Type: Fantasy Romance

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date: 16/02/22

Publication Date: 01/2018

Review Tags: Fairy Tale

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

I enjoy spending as much time as I can between the covers of a book, traveling through time and around the world. When I'm not having adventures with fictional characters, I'm an attorney in Virginia and I love just hanging out with my husband, little man, and the cat who rules our house.

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