Review: Cress by Marissa Meyer

Book: Cress, Marissa Meyer

Series: The Lunar Chronicles series #3

Publisher: Feiwell & Friends

Release Date: February 4th, 2014 

In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has. 

Rating: 5 stars

Gah!!! This book gave me so many feels. Too many for my poor heart to handle all at once. Myer really knows how to pull at your heart strings and pull hard. I was crying multiple times in this book, while simultaneously shouting for joy. When I first started reading Cinder, I was sceptical of the fact that it was in third person narrative as I felt personally that you get a better feel for the protagonist when it’s written in first person. However I totally understand why Myer decided to do it. She has created so many characters that she now needs to have complete chapters devoted to each character and they can’t all be in first person realistically. However it’s still very well written and I still feel close to all the characters despite how many there are now, and no chapter or dialogue is ever repeated.

This book takes place directly after the events of Scarlet. Scarlet and Wolf have now joined Cinder and Thorne and Iko on their ship on their quest to save Earth from Queen Levana. This time we are introduced to Cress, a girl based on Rapunzel as she is trapped in a satellite by her evil mistress, Sybil. She is talented at hacking computers, and has been sending down Lunar spaceships to Earth and spying on Emperor Kai (swoon!) for years. The story continues as Cinder and her friends try and figure out a way to stop the royal wedding so she can reclaim her rightful place as Queen on Luna. 

God, so many things happened in this book!! Just when I think one thing is going to happen, shit hits the fan and everything goes wrong. But then it turns out this is just what needed to happen and everything is great again... until more shit hits the fan and it seems all is lost. It was a roller coaster of emotions to read. 

Thorne and Cress spend some time together and their relationship is really cute. Scarlet and Wolf have a very tentative and subtle relationship, yet you can still see how much they truly care for each other. Plus, their bond is really tested in this book. And Cinder and Kai finally have some page time!! Finally. Since they never met each other in Scarlet, I was really starting to miss their playful banter and the way they just got each other. The scene they had at the end was just perfect.

I think this book was better than Scarlet, as even though many events occurred in both books, I feel like more emotional things happened in Cress than in Scarlet which made a big difference. However, still not as good as Cinder, a book I didn’t have high expectations for but just blew my mind. 

I can’t wait to read Winter, the final addition to the series to find out what happens to Cinder, Kai, Scarlet, Cress, Thorne, Wolf and Iko. And knowing Myer, we’ll probably meet a lot more wonderful characters in this book as well.