3.5 stars. 
 Crimson Bound is a wonderful, dark, thrilling story, inspired by one of my all time favorite fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood. 
 Crimson Bound is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood and The Girl With No Hands, and although the story twists these and forms an unique story itself, you can catch glimpses of the fairy tales everywhere. Do mind, there is no Big Bad Wolf (which saddened me a little). 
 But 
 this book is was quite great! it had magnificent world-building, mixed with mythology and fantasy. The Great Forest, which is a big part of the book, is wonderful and creepy and beautifully descripted. 
 I loved the concept of the Bloodbound: a human that meets a forestborn can (and most likely will) get marked, giving him or her a black star placed somewhere on their body like a tattoo. Than the human has three days to either kill someone and become a Bloodbound, someone that will eventually turn into a Forestborn and thus becomes part of the Great Forest, almost like some sort of slave. OR they don't kill someone and die themselves. 
 Needless to say, our MC Rachelle killed a person after she got marked, became a Bloodbound an now has to live with what she has done and what she will become. 
 The story itself centers around Rachelle, whom learns that the Devourer, an evil being that controls the evil Great Forest, will return to earth too create Endless Night, which would cause the Forestborn to be able to rule and hunt humankind (if this sounds vague, trust me, it's actually very good). 
 Rachelle wants to stop the Devourer and has to find one of the two legendary swords that could kill him. 
 BUT she is also assigned to be a bodyguard of Armand Vareilles, one of the illigitimate sons of the King she serves as a Bloodbound. This causes some minor problems, since they don't like each other very much at the beginning of the story. So for Rachelle, it's a sort of race against time, in which she has to find one of the swords before the Devourer returns, while she also has to be guarding Armand, which takes up some of her time. 
 Despite all of this, there are a lot of twists and turns in this book, causing you to sometimes wonder why you didn't see certain stuff coming. Other plottwists were very easy to predict, though. 
 I did have some problems with the book as well. 
 1) It really didn't need to be 400+ pages. I think some stuff was really dragged out. Like finding the swords took very long (view spoiler)[ (almost all of the time Rachelle is just running around the chateau trying to find a hidden door. We know there is a door from the beginning, but she goes out looking for it a lot. I get that she shouldn't find it within a week, but almost three months is a bit long.) (hide spoiler)] 
 2) that damn love triangle was unnecessary. Especially when Rachelle decides that she might have feelings for both guys, instead of just one of them. I'm gonna put this next small bit as a spoiler, just in case (view spoiler)[ (I'm sorry, but I understand that Rachelle has a certain attraction to Erec, especially as we find out he is the forestborn that marked her. But I'm not big for love triangles, and this one was just annoying to me. I did not care for Erec, and it was annoying to read how Rachelle started to wonder if she truly had feelings for Erec or if it was just because he was the one who turned her. I did not care for it, sadly.) (hide spoiler)] 
 Despite that, I quite loved this story! Especially the last ten chapters or so were amazing! The action was great! 
 If you're a fan of dark fairy-tale inspired books, this one might be what you're looking for!