Westerns are never my thing until they get mixed with horror or fantasy. 

 

Lish McBride’s Red in Tooth and Claw may be marketed as a YA fantasy, but I definitely interpreted it as a YA western horror with cult and occult underpinnings. Fantasy is stretching. 

 

Faolan has larger issues than grief when her grandfather passes that comes in the form of the town elders insisting that at 17 years of age Faolan is too young to be the sole caretaker of the lands she’s ostensibly just inherited… and that’s just when they think she’s a boy like her grandfather has had her masquerade as for all of her life to keep her safe. The frontier isn’t safe for young women. Faolan reckons that facade, along with the deed to the property that’s hidden, is all that’s keeping Faolan from either being offered up for a shotgun wedding or from having to give up that deed if she wants to live. Deciding to bide her time, Faolan doesn’t fight the town’s decision to send her to a mysterious place called The Settlement, which seems to ostensibly be an orphanage or group home run by the head of a new religion Faolan has no intention to follow. 

 

Red in Tooth and Claw is an interesting story that moves along at a nice, steady pace, even if it could use a little more propulsion. I don’t want to say that it’s predictable, but if you’re familiar with this sort of story you can probably identify the direction certain people and certain events are heading. The horror of the story is definitely a slower burn than the intrigue and mystery of the story, which gave the book a nice texture in terms of layering the story: It allowed certain parts of the story to resolve a little before unfolding the next bit that was ready to resolve instead of dumping it all on the reader at once. Normally, I’m all for a book going bonkers, but since this book is geared toward a YA audience and does have a rather large amount of gore in the back half I’m glad that there’s a touch more room to breathe. 

 

It’s a really solid read in a subgenre I wish more people wrote in. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by the publisher and author via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: Body Horror/Cult Horror/Occult Horror/Western/YA Fiction/YA Historical/YA Horror