Scarlet (book 1 of the Scarlet series) by A.C. Gaughen
Blurb: Will Scarlet is good at two things: stealing from the rich and keeping secrets - skills that are in high demand in Robin Hood's band of thieves, who protect the people of Nottingham from the evil sheriff. Scarlet's biggest secret of all is one only Robin and his men know...that she is posing as a thief; that the slip of a boy who is fast with sharp knives is really a girl. The terrible events in her past that led Scarlet to hide her real identity are in danger of being exposed when the thief taker Lord Gisbourne arrives in town to rid Nottingham of the Hood and his men once and for all. As Gisbourne closes in a put innocent lives at risk, Scarlet must decide how much the people of Nottingham mean to her, especially John Little, a flirtatious fellow outlaw, and Robin, whose quick smiles have the rare power to unsettle her. There is real honor among these thieves and so much more - making this a fight worth dying for.
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I love the Robin Hood legend (Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley being one of my favourite books of all time) and I love stories of girls who dress up as boys and do kickass things so I really wanted to like this novel, especially as it continued to show up in the 'girls dressing up as boys' list …
The sad thing is that I liked Robin, Much, John … I just didn't care much for the eponymous character herself … The story is well-written, atmospheric and contains a nice ensemble cast of characters as Robin Hood's band of merry men (and woman). The problem is that Scarlet herself is pretty unlikeable. It's not that she's flawed, that's fine … she just comes across as very bratty and there are a number of times when she remains silent and allows certain assumptions to be made about her preferences/state of mind/feelings just for the sake of racheting up the dramatic tension in the novel. She herself causes the misunderstandings so notwithstanding the woe of her past - it can be quite hard to sympathise with her.
I couldn't help thinking that both John and Robin could do with much better - and indeed deserved much better. The novel also falls into what seems to be the inevitable Young Adult Trope of the love triangle - I am not sure why all/most young adult novels must have heroine in first person point of view vied over by two handsome men. It gets old fast. A solution is fan fic in which instead of a love triangle we have a polyamorous relationship in which everyone wins - but by the end of the book I was seriously inclined to tell both John and Rob to find another girl because Scarlet was just so annoying. I will probably read the second novel because I did like the writing even if I didn't like the main character …
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