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.
Almost as a rule of trade, sequels are not as good as the first in a series.
That is not the case with the Lunar Chronicles.
Anyone who read my review of Cinder knows that I was blown away by the characters, the world, and the story, and this sequel did not scrimp away from any of those details, either.
I'm a sucker for a strong heroine, and I got that in Cinder, and I was delighted to meet the kick-ass, no-nonsense Scarlet in this book. She is strong and defiant, but she's not perfect. She's one-minded, stubborn, and impulsive, all of which gets her into some serious trouble, but it also makes her three-dimensional and real.
I don't think I have a bad word to say about this novel. I'm infatuated with the characters, the tension and drama is constantly rising in stakes, the world-building is great -I love it all.
Normally I end up shying away from fairytale retellings; they just don't go well, in my past experience. But Meyer has surprised me twice, and I have full confidence she will do it again in Cress. The original story is fully recognizable in the current situation, but the story being told is so original and unique that it reads like a new tale.
I am a little confused as to the reasoning behind the "wolf-soldiers" and their real purpose in the long-run of the story, but if I think of "moon" and "animal," my mind goes to either owls (not very ferocious or terrifying) or wolves (both scary and strong). So in my head, the connection between these wolf-hybrid people and Luna make sense.
Overall Impression:
I loved this book. I love Meyer's writing style, and I will continue to follow The Lunar Chronicles through the final installment of Winter. I'm excited to see what's still to come.
The Blonde Rating: 5/5
GoodReads Rating: 4.3/5
Amazon Buyers' Rating: 4.7/5
Check out my review for Cinder, and [soon to come] Cress.
Thanks for reading,
The Blonde
Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.
After Mara survives the traumatizing accident at the old asylum, it makes sense that she has issues. She lost her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister, and as if that weren’t enough to cope with, her family moves to a new state in order to give her a fresh start. But that fresh start is quickly filled with hallucinations—or are they premonitions?—and then corpses, and the boundary between reality and nightmare is wavering. At school, there’s Noah, a devastatingly handsome charmer who seems determined to help Mara piece together what’s real, what’s imagined—and what’s very, very dangerous.
I was really excited to start this series this year, because I'd heard so much about it, and yet knew next to nothing about the story's plot. When I realized it was a psychological thriller, I got even more excited.
Then I read the book. I kept waiting and waiting...and waiting for something to happen. All I got was a lot of gooey Mara-Noah relationship building, which would be fine...if the synopsis hadn't promised a psychological thriller. The writing is fine, makes for an easy read, but that's not all that makes a good book. We didn't really find out about her powers until the book was more than half over, and by then it was too late to really do anything superb with them.
The book started off with the reader wondering two things: How did Mara's friends die, and why is she still alive?
Technically both questions were "kind of" answered, but by the end of the book, the reader has so many more new questions that aren't answered or even really addressed that it doesn't matter if the first two were answered or not. I finished this book confused and frustrated.
The Blonde's Rating: 2/5
GoodReads Rating: 4/5
Amazon Buyers' Rating: 4/5
But I had already bought the second book, so I couldn't NOT read it.
Mara Dyer once believed she could run from her past.
She can’t.
She used to think her problems were all in her head.
They aren’t.
She couldn’t imagine that after everything she’s been through, the boy she loves would still be keeping secrets.
She’s wrong.
My hopes weren't too high after the disappointment of "Unbecoming," but I was almost immediately surprised.
The second book in this series is instantly enticing, as if trying to make up for the lack of excitement from the first. The reader is constantly frustrated, as Mara is, by her family and peers not believing her, and the fear that strengthens its grip on Mara as the book progresses gets the reader's heart pumping. And in the back of your mind, a small part of you is asking yourself -is Mara Dyer actually an unreliable narrator?
Of course there are more questions than answers in this book as well, but the text invoked such a varied range of emotions from me that I didn't mind. When I wasn't terrified that someone -Mara's dead ex-boyfriend, the weird witch doctor from the first book, the crazy b*tch at her "troubled teens" school, or her suspicious psychiatrist feeding her more and more unnecessary drugs -was going to pop out from around the corner and kill her, I was SO frustrated that her family refused to listen to Mara. I mean, they've known Mara her whole life, why can't they believe that she wouldn't just lie about this kind of thing, or that she's not crazy? Especially Mara's brother! I thought she was on her side, and then he just turns on her! Awful!
And then you get lulled into a false sense of security with the cute and happy times between Mara and Noah, only to have it snatched back by some disturbing sleepwalking episode, or a weird dream that makes no sense!
Needless to say, this book also ends on a cliffhanger of cliffhangers, and I couldn't be more exasperated and impatient for the June release of "Retribution."
The Blonde's Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.4/5
Amazon Buyers' Rating: 4.6/5
Recommendations: Obviously other people see something I don't in the first book, so yeah, go ahead and read it, but ONLY so you can get to the greatness of The Evolution of Mara Dyer.
That's all for this double-review,
Thanks for reading,
The Blonde
