Review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

 Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive.
Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Marissa Meyer is one of my favorite authors after reading Cinder and she’s still one of my favorites after devouring Scarlet. This is a book that will leave everyone anxiously awaiting the release of Cress and Winter. The story focused on a teen girl named Scarlet who’d grandmother has been kidnapped. With the help of a mysterious, strong man named Wolf, she faces many challenges to find her Grandmere. Although this book was mostly about Scarlet, there was still a lot of Cinder’s story in it too and it all intertwined.

I loved reading about Scarlet and her journey to Paris to find her grandmother. I admit I didn’t like her character at first because she was very bratty and headstrong, but I grew to like her. I enjoyed reading about her and Wolf’s relationship. It was a good kind of weird reading about them because their relationship grew really fast, but in a way it was also slow (if that makes any sense). One character that I absolutely hated (in a good way) was Queen Levana, my goodness I can’t wait for her to be defeated.

I liked the setting change and how the author made it so readers could explore a lot of Earth, not just the Eastern Commonwealth. In Scarlet, a lot of the story takes place in France which was a nice bit of cultural diversity. There was a new array of characters and a little bit of the book was about the old (well, a bunch was about Cinder).

I really liked this book and there wasn’t really anything I didn’t like except Scarlet at the beginning so this book gets 4 stars from me. This series is a must read, especially if you love retellings of fairytales. I cannot wait for Cress to come out next year.

Source: ALA Conference 2012