[BOOK REVIEW] Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Title:  Scarlet

Author:  Marissa Meyer

Genre: Urban Fantasy / Horror / Fairy Tale / France / Dystopia

Year Published: 2013

Number of Pages: 454 pages

Date Read:  9/3/2015   

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Series: The Lunar Chronicles #2

Source:  Library

Content Rating:  Ages 15+ (Some Scary Moments)

After reading Marissa Meyer’s first book in the Lunar Chronicles series “Cinder,” I just I had to pick up the second book in the series “Scarlet” and I never would have thought that I would enjoy this book as much as the first book!

After the tragic events of the first book, Cinder ends up being thrown into prison when she defied Queen Levana at the ball in the last book.  However, Cinder ends up escaping from prison with the help from the charming and hilarious fellow fugitive Captain Carswell Thorne and her newly found Lunar abilities.  Both Cinder and Thorne try to travel around the planet Earth in order to escape from Queen Levana’s ruthless forces and find out more about Cinder’s mysterious past.  Meanwhile, a young teenage girl named Scarlet Benoit is on a journey to find her grandmother, who has been missing for weeks and she ends up meeting a mysterious young man named Wolf, who might know about her grandmother’s whereabouts.

Wow! This book surprised and terrified me at the same time!  I will admit that when I saw the title of this book “Scarlet” the first time around, I thought that this book was only going to focus on Scarlet and not be connected to “Cinder” in any kind of way.  However, I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that this book still continued Cinder’s story, but has Scarlet subtlety get involved in Cinder’s story, while her story is being told at the same time. Marissa Meyer did a fantastic job at writing the story from two different perspectives as we get Cinder’s side of the story of trying to escape from Queen Levana and learning more about her dark and mysterious past, while we also get Scarlet’s side of the story as she tries to search for her grandmother who has been missing for weeks and I loved the way that their stories intertwine with each other throughout the book.  I also loved the way that Marissa Meyer wrote each character as I fell in love with each character in this story, especially with Wolf and Captain Carswell Thorne!  I loved the way that Scarlet was being written in this book as she is shown to be a strong female protagonist who is determined to find her grandmother at all costs and I loved the fact that Scarlet shows so much love for her grandmother, despite everyone being against her in this universe.  I also loved the character development that Cinder goes through in this book as in the first book; she was mainly a lowly stepdaughter who worked on mechanics on a small scale while in this book, she used her abilities in mechanics to help her escape from Queen Levana’s soldiers and it was interesting seeing her struggle with her true heritage as a Lunar and seeing what that would mean for the world.  I absolutely loved Captain Carswell Thorne’s character as he is probably the funniest character in the entire book and I just loved his bantering with Cinder!  I just hope we get to see more of him in the later installments of this series!  And who could forget the ever loving yet mysterious Wolf in this story?  I loved the fact that his character is full of mystery and it was pretty interesting seeing a human character possess wolf-like abilities in this retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

For anyone who does not like horrifying moments in a novel, this book does have plenty of scary moments, especially when the true nature of Queen Levana’s army is revealed, which I found to be pretty creepy.

Overall, “Scarlet” is a truly fantastic book that is full of twists and turns that any fan of the “Lunar Chronicles” series will definitely enjoy reading!  Now, I am off to read the third book in the series “Cress!”