Cress

Review for the series:

I loved them!

Four fairy tales — Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White — woven into the larger narrative of a tyrant queen of a lunar kingdom trying to take over the nations of Earth and the long-lost princess and her band of allies trying to stop her.

I absolutely love this futuristic sci-fi world and how the fairy tale story elements were twisted around to fit within it. I also appreciate how all of the loose threads were neatly tied up at the end of the series. ( )

This was just perfect. I absolutely loved it. And I love this series. It's coming together so nicely. I am just in love. That's all I have to say. ( )

This dragged on and on and on with scenes and whole chapters that added nothing, and predicable plot twists to boot. In fact, one third of this book could have easily been shredded and it would have only benefitted the story. The heroine of the prequel, a strong-willed and outspoken character, is reduced to a damsel in distress and has zero relevance for the rest of the book other than to induce angst, and to boot, her love interest is also rendered pretty much pointless throughout most of the story. More infuriation is it that all that all of the abovementioned could have been avoided if only the characters had the brains to think of a code word.

The feeling when you are stuck watching a bad movie because you need to see what it ends, that is what made me continue reading. That, and because I wanted to see happened to the three characters and two ships I was invested in. There were but a handful of chapters or singular scenes that I could appreciate but those were few and far between. ( )

I love this series so much, and this book just kind of killed me because it was so good, but I cannot currently get ahold of the next book since it recently came out. (T^T)
the ending had me gripping the edge of my seat, and I honestly can barely hold myself back from buying the book just so I can read it.
wonderful book and wonderful series ( )

So, going into this book, I had pretty low expectations. I didn't really love the first two books - they were entertaining and all, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't feel all that invested. Maybe it just wasn't the right time for me to read them. Cress blew me away.

The character development of multiple characters was great and I just gotta say, the Thorne/Cress relationship had me cracking up. Some of the baloney that Thorne would say had me smiling all by myself and there were times that I even laughed aloud (and let's get real, I don't do that for books very often). My heart broke for Wolf in this book and I was surprised that Marissa Meyer was not afraid to HURT her characters. I think it felt so much more real because of that. So often in YA books, authors don't want to hurt the stars of their story except for minor scrapes, bruises, and bumps. Not in the case of this book though! Characters are shot, chopped up, knocked out, and tortured which makes the connections feel all the more real.

I feel that Marissa Meyer's writing style became a little stronger in this book as well. As I've been reading this series, Cinder is probably my least favorite. And honestly, it's probably because of the writing style. Something about her sentence structure and style in that first book just weren't doing it for me. I know a lot of people have said that Scarlet is their least favorite of the series, but I thought writing style-wise it was stronger than the first. Plus, who doesn't love a brooding bad-boy (enter in Wolf).

The only thing that I didn't like as much was that the plot twists were insanely easy to see coming. This story definitely was more complex than the first two because it is weaving together at least 6 characters' stories (and these characters are not with each other for the majority of the story) so you have to make sure to pay attention to what people are doing and which characters you are with at any given part of the story. But even so... with the complexity of the story, I was still able to see the plot twists coming so felt like I knew what was going to happen to just about every character by the end of this story and saw every "reveal" where I felt like Marissa Meyer wanted people to stop in surprise and awe. Nope, sorry. Not surprised. Saw those coming Marissa.

Even with those subtle as a bomb foreshadowing moments, I still immensely enjoyed this book. I read 40% of it one day and then the rest the next day and it was the frenzied kind of reading a person loves because you just have to find out what is going to happen next! The frenzied kind of reading that when it happens for me, I tend to skip forward in the sentences and paragraphs because nothing bad better happen to my character loves. Not a favorite book overall, but still 5 star worthy in comparison to rest of the series. ( )