Okami

A Little Red Riding Hood Retelling (Tales of Akatsuki, Book 3)

By: Nicolette Andrews

Narrated by: Joanna Roddy

A prisoner seeking his freedom. A woman chosen by the gods. To break himself of his centuries-long bondage, he must capture her.

Shin gave everything up for love. Uncaring whether he lives or dies, when he catches a spy in his master’s land, he lets her escape. What he hadn’t been counting on was just how cruel his master can be. Now he must catch the spy or be locked away for eternity in darkness.

Pretending to be a woman, he infiltrates a woman’s only temple. Akane the spy is headstrong and determined to not trust him. But when fate sets them on a quest to save a kidnapped girl, they’re drawn together. As he falls for her, Shin finds a new reason to live. But fail to bring her back to his master and he’ll never see the light of day again.

©2019 Nicole Trushinski (P)2022 Nicole Trushinski

Love Twists of Japanese Tales

I love all things manga and anime and am a sucker for Japanese-styled retellings. Nicolette Andrews delivers.

Narration is quite good.

Baskerville Book Reviews

I went into this book thinking it was a Little Mermaid retelling. Kinda shows how much of a grasp I have on reality, now that I think about it. I previously reviewed Yuki: A Snow White Retelling, I didn’t know I had all 3 books. While I spent the first few hours of this story lost and confused, I still feel I have a decent grasp of what was going on.

That’s not saying much though. I was still lost. There were a bunch of Japanese names and words being brought up, much like in Yuki. I’ve heard the names before (okami, oni, etc.) but I have no idea what they mean. I’ve also never had more than a passing familiarity with the Red Riding Hood story in any format. All this to say; I went into this with little to no context.

We’ve all seen the story about a pair who are reluctantly traveling together and slowly starting to have feelings for each other. It’s well done and even if you want to call it unoriginal, it’s a retelling. So it’s not like the book is pretending to be original.

The failing here is the pacing. All of the romance scenes are really sped up. They really didn’t do the whole “I can’t stand you and I can’t wait to not have to travel with you anymore!” thing. There were some sweet bonding scenes and scenes where they shared a moment and grew as characters. There was always so much more of import going on story-wise, the romance really took a back seat. The protagonists had chemistry but not the time to properly develop it in a way that didn’t feel rushed.

There was a super obvious scene. The moment I describe it, if you’ve read any romance before, you’ll know what I mean. The scene where one character finds out the other was lying about or hiding something, then gets pissed at them for a few chapters before forgiving them. That scene played out as expected, but it really felt wasted as it was over with so quickly, it really didn’t feel like it needed to happen.

The audio narration was great. I didn’t take any notes because there weren’t any repeated audio instances, I was always able to tell who was speaking. The narrator didn’t constantly mispronounce words and spoke in a clear, consistent tone of voice. It was a nice treat to have a competent narrator with clean audio.

NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.

A Creative Re-Imagining of a Fairytale

I really enjoyed this tale written by Nicolette Andrews. I liked its creativity and the addition of Japanese folklore elements. The characters were fun and complex. The plot had many twists and turns with a lot of action. The use of magic and fantastical beasts added to the excitement of the story. Joanna Roddy's narration was fine. I was given a free copy of the audiobook and I have voluntarily posted this review.

GOOD VALUE, DETAILED, ENTERTAINING. MYTHICAL

I could have sworn the writer must be Japanese to have so many details of the myths, in fact I looked up the writers profile and was surprised to find she is not so. The narrator did boar and evil monkey voices perfectly along side men's and women's voices, very clever, I could see all the action thanks to her descriptive elocution. This is over 7hrs in audio form of non stop action, greed, scheming , self recriminations and healing by friendship. RECOMMENDED

Love Okami

This is a retold little red riding hood story with a Japanese twist that I enjoyed listening to. It was well written with wonderful characters and amazing narration.