Cress by Marissa Meyer: Book Review

My Synopsis:

I don’t even know how to summarize this one. Cinder, Scarlet, Captain Thorne, Wolf, and Iko are doing their best to eliminate the threat that Queen Levana and her Lunar army present to Earth. They’re in contact with Levana’s chief hacker, lonely Cress, imprisoned on a satellite with no means to cut her lovely locks. That’s right–Rapunzel has made her way into the story.

My Review:

Holy smokes. When does the next one come out? November? *sigh*

For some reason, I thought this series was a trilogy, so I expected everything to be wrapped up neatly. I just got more and more stressed out as everything fell apart. Let’s face it–Cinder and company are very much the underdogs. But things just got worse and worse and worse for them!

I seem to remember missing Cinder and Emperor Kai in Scarlet. They were there but not as much as I would have liked them to be. I didn’t mention that in my review though, so maybe I’m wrong. Either way, they were each front and center quite a bit in this book, so I was happy about that.

Scarlet and Wolf fell into the background this time though. That might not be a terrible thing. I like Wolf but Scarlet irritated me a bit. I definitely do not like where her story arc went though. Grrr…

And now it looks like the last book will bring in Snow White. I’m not sure how I feel about that. One of my friends is emphatic that Snow White is the most irritating fairy tale. Off the top of my head, I agree, at least based on the Disney movie. She doesn’t really seem to have a thought in her pretty little head and people just seem to feel sorry for her. Princess Winter (read: Snow White) makes a brief appearance in Cress. She seems just as breathless, airy, and thoughtless as I would expect. Hopefully there’s more to her than that first impression.

But I haven’t talked about Cress at all! I like her. She’s become an awkward, romantic, dreamy-eyed genius of a hacker in her isolation on that satellite. The reality of Earth is a bit much for her to take, but that all felt very real. She has her freakout moments and makes some pretty big mistakes but she eventually starts to figure things out and show some inner steel. I like her. I do have to say that the whole hair thing felt a bit superfluous and only there to establish her as Rapunzel. Other aspects of the fairy tale were worked in effectively though, even things I thought would most likely be overlooked. I was happily surprised by that!

Captain Thorne is starting to show that there’s more to him than a vain flyboy. That’s still mostly what he’s showing to the world but he has moments where his inner hero shows through.

I do love listening to Robecca Soler narrate this series. She is young enough to fit the part and she keeps me on the edge of my seat as I’m driving. All I can say is that it’s a good thing that I’ve been driving at weird times lately because I don’t know if I would be safe to navigate in the usual bumper-to-bumper while I listen to these books!

If you enjoy this series, you won’t be disappointed by Cress. If you haven’t started them, pick up Cinder and give it a try. I just love these highly original re-tellings.

Similar Books:

If you liked Cress, you might also like my reviews of

• Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer, read by Rebecca Soler
• Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) by Marissa Meyer, read by Rebecca Soler
• Rapunzel’s Revenge (Rapunzel’s Revenge #1) by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale

Reading Challenge:

Purchase:

Buy Cress from Malaprop’s Bookstore in beautiful Asheville, NC or