Review: Cress by Marissa Meyer

I finally finished this! It took me almost a month, mostly due to my own business and procrastination, but I finally finished it! Oh, I'm so happy!

Publication Date: February 4, 2014

Synopsis:
Not including a synopsis as this is the third book in the Lunar Chronicles and everything would just be a spoiler.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Thoughts:
I already knew, going into this, that Cress was everyone's favorite book in the series so far. All people talked about was how each book gets better and better, which means that we're all putting a lot of hope in Winter to be the best in the entire series. Kinda unfair to it, since it hasn't even been published yet, but we're all doing it anyways.

I had actually picked this up sometime in February, I think, but only made it 64 pages through before I had a whole lot of other things come up, which meant that I never continued. So I let my sister read it first and then decided to come back to it after finishing Living Dead Girl last month. And in my first sitting, I re-read the first 64 pages and continued on to about the 90+ page mark. It didn't stop there though, a few days later, I hit the 40% mark and was absolutely loving it. Then, sadly, came a whole week where I didn't have the time or energy to read (though I binge-watched Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra).

Not much can really be said about this plot, because anything I say here would be a spoiler. But I do really like the direction that Marissa Meyer took with this book and all that she explored here. It was a change from what we experienced in Cinder and Scarlet, but not so much that we would feel disconnected from the existing storyline. In fact, I think that Marissa Meyer does a great job of layering her storylines and threading them together to make a beautiful picture. No one can fault her for having a sloppy tie-in of her characters or for making things confusing. Somehow, she just has this talent of giving you more and more to learn about without ever confusing you.

That's pretty much all I'm gonna say about my thoughts, besides adding that Cress was also my favorite in the entire series so far. As of right now, I don't own Fairest, which is the novella-book-thing that tells the story of Queen Levana, but I do plan on getting it soon, and picking up Winter when it comes out.

Characters:
Cinder is probably still my favorite character out of everyone in this series. I find her so relatable and real, which is always nice to have in a protagonist. It's been great to see her grow over the series, and I do like that we're beginning to see a different side of her in this book, more so than we did with the others.

I was actually kind of saddened by the direction that Scarlet's storyline went in, but I see how it's actually really important and how it changes things.

Cress was a very...fresh addition, along with being innocent. That innocence annoyed me a little at the beginning, because I thought she was a little too naive and sort of spent too much time in her own fantasy world, but I grew to like her more as the book progresses. I still think that she's incredibly innocent, but I think that innocence will end up helping some of our other characters out in Winter.

Kai, our first love interest of the series. Now, I don't actually remember hearing a lot of people talk about how they feel about Kai, which is interesting, because he's my favorite out of the three current male protagonists. I like his personality, his character, and how much he's grown over the past two books. He may not have changed as much as Wolf, but I still think that Kai has made some impressive progress since we first met him.

Wolf is definitely my second favorite among the guys. I just love everything about him. He reminds me so much of what I want in a guy, and actually, there was a point in Scarlet where he reminded me of one of my really good guy friends, whom I admire for several of his character traits.

Lastly, there's Thorne. Our arrogant, comical, charming Thorne, who has all the little quirks that make him so familiar as a character, but sets him apart as well. You can't really hate him for having that arrogance, because you know that he's right when he says he's charming and attractive, and so you end up loving him for who he is. On top of that, I think that he's another character that has made some significant growth, which I really love.

Overall:
5 stars! And I would say that if you haven't picked up the Lunar Chronicles yet, you really should. It's a really great way of re-telling our classic fairytales, without losing too much of what we're all so familiar with. So hurry up and start this series before Winter comes out, because you won't regret it.

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