As Red as Blood
Author: Salla Simukka
Author: Owen Witesman
Book 1 in the Snow White Trilogy series
Pages: 274
Published: 2014
Age: 13+
In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.
Lumikki lives alone in a studio apartment far from her parents and the past she left behind. She transferred into a prestigious art school, and she’s singularly focused on studying and graduating. Lumikki ignores the cliques, the gossip, and the parties held by the school’s most popular and beautiful boys and girls.
But finding the blood-stained money changes everything. Suddenly, Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events as she finds herself helping to trace the origins of the money. Events turn even more deadly when evidence points to dirty cops and a notorious drug kingpin best known for the brutality with which he runs his business.
As Lumikki loses control of her carefully constructed world, she discovers that she’s been blind to the forces swirling around her—and she’s running out of time to set them right. When she sees the stark red of blood on snow, it may be too late to save her friends or herself.
Please Note: The original Finnish edition was first published in March, 2013, under the title Punainen kuin veri.
About the Snow White Trilogy Series
Books in series order
- 1.As Red as Blood(2014)
- 2.As White As Snow(2015)
- 3.As Black As Ebony(2015)
Reading age: 13+ years
This series should be read in order.
17-year-old Lumikki Andersson goes to a high school of performing arts. She has made it a rule to stay out of things that do not involve her. However, the rule is put to the test on leap day when she finds washed five hundred euro notes hung to dry in her school’s darkroom. It turns out that three students from Lumikki’s high school have in their possession plastic bags containing bloody notes, and soon Lumikki finds herself caught in a tangled web of international drug trade. Elisa, one of the three students and daughter of a wealthy family, begins to suspect that her father, a police officer in the narcotics division, is somehow involved.
Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events and faces life-threatening situations on the run from Russian and Estonian criminals. Finally, after four hectic days, Lumikki finds herself in a huge mansion where the mysterious Polar Bear is having a legendary secret party. In the mansion, all secrets are revealed. It’s the coldest winter in decades; the streets of Tampere are frozen and white with snow. And nothing is as red against white snow as blood.
Translated from Finnish by Owen Witesman, this dark and thrilling series has been likened to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a young adult audience.