CRESS

*spoiler alert

Cress high up in her satellite with no one for company. Forced to do the bidding of her evil guardian. But, what happens when she begins to decide things for herself and takes control of her own destiny?

I love when things from earlier books come back as major plot points. We actually first met Cress in book one as she is the one to originally alert Cinder to Levana's plan to assassinate Kai.

We formally meet Cress and she is an absolute wonderful addition to the novel. A little genius, it is revealed to the reader that all the little miracles we have noticed in the previous books have really been thanks to her as she has been using her genius in order to help the Rampion crew stay hidden and away. While Cress spends much of the book wishing for a hero to come save her and have a fairytale ending, she doesn't seem to realize she is already a hero in the making of this story. Meyers gives us an amazing addition to her character line up while also leaving a lot of room for growth

At first I thought it was a little weird that she had been obsessing over Thorne, since they hadn’t even met. But, it started to make sense after realizing that while she was longing for companionship, she had taken the information she had learned about him and created this identity for him. It was the scene at the end on the spaceship where it clicked for me as to why Cress had been so infatuated with him.

I really like Thorne. He knows who he is and who is he isn’t he has this arrogant swagger but, even knowing that he isn’t necessarily the hero that Cress has made him out to be there is no sob story. He doesn’t necessarily mourn the person he isn’t or the bad decisions he’s made which, I feel is typically the go-to for many male protagonists. He lives in the moment and is true to himself even when he makes mistakes and feels some measure of guilt and he tries to right his wrongs.

I didn’t necessarily miss Scarlet’s presence but, I thought that there should have been more of her POV because it was odd having her only appear for those few chapters. It made for gaps in the story and her storyline and lacked follow through. I also thought there should have been more context to what was going on in Wolf's head.

What is interesting is, in the first book Dr. Erland was my favorite character. I had this feeling about him. His death scene was actually very well done with him coming face-to-face with Levana. I didn’t think he necessarily had to die.

And with every book I love Cinder a little bit more. I even started to like Kai more in this book even though in earlier books I didn't care for him that much. He is starting to really develop a stronger personality and sounds more like the leader he is supposed to be.

I really enjoyed the mysterious entrance of Princess Winter. It left me wanting to know more about who she is and her intentions. Especially since Jacin had taken such great lengths to protect her these weeks.

Overall, she handles the POV’s very well especially since there are so many of them. What I also appreciate about this is that it is obviously a YA novel/series. And I don’t believe the intended audience for the book would be any higher than 16. However, she introduces dark scenarios into the plot and handles them really well for the intended audience.

This so far was probably my favorite book of the series! I was definitely left wanting to read more. 5/5 stars!!!