Review: WINTER by Marissa Meyer

TITLE: Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, Book 4)
AUTHOR: Marissa Meyer
AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.MarissaMeyer.com
GENRE: Young Adult, Fantacy, Sci-Fi, Romance
PUBLISHED:
 November 10, 2015 - Feiwel & Friends
MY RATING: 4

FIND ON: Amazon

SYNOPSIS:

(Courtesy of Goodreads – No Spoilers!)

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?


REVIEW:


I love when a story comes together. This one wasn’t as fabulous as Book Three, but it gave me what I was hoping for. This is the conclusion to the overall story of Cinder adding in another main character named Winter. She is totally crazy. Her craziness is so painful to read, but necessary to understand her character. I’m so glad there are good people on Luna. In the previous books, I began to wonder why Earth doesn’t just shoot the moon out of the sky. But Winter gave me hope for the salvaging the people of Luna.

Jacin the man in love with Winter confused me for a long time (which was probably intentional.) I wasn’t sure if he could be trusted, until he proved that when it comes to Winter, he is 100% reliable.

RATING:


I am rating this book at 4: A Very Good Read. My expectations may have been too high and Marissa was going in her own devious and unique direction with this book. I don’t think it was as good as the rest because of the pure evil we had to endure while reading about Winter living on Luna. I’ve never had so much murder in my heart. Even though that points toward EXCELLENT story writing. (You got me, Marissa!) I was in so much pain during this book, it was hard to endure. So if you think the “strong emotional experience” counts for a 5… Fine! You can have it!

RECOMMENDATIONS:


This book leads us back into gore and violence, especially with all the mind control happening on Luna. Again, I’d rate it as a PG-13 movie because of that. There is also kissing, thankfully. I needed relief from the horror. Just like the entire series, my teen handled reading it just fine. (She actually read it before me, so I couldn’t warn her.)

*NOTE ABOUT ENTIRE SERIES:


This series was an intense and fabulous adventure into a futuristic world. I was worried the fairytale themes would cast a cliché shadow over it and I worried it would be dumb. But it didn’t! To my surprise the fairytale theme acted more like a “lens” in which to look through as opposed to a storyline in which it was stuck to. It wildly deterred from all the storylines of each of the old tiredfairytale characters. Good job Marissa Meyer!
I’m so glad I didn’t find this series until 2016 and I was able to Binge-Read them ALL!  Yum!

(I just found out there is a book of 9 novella stories that I must buy called STARS ABOVE.)


More books by Marissa Meyer:

The Lunar Chronicles

Book 1: CINDER
Book 2: SCARLET
Book 3: CRESS
Novella: FAIREST (Back-story on Levana the Evil Queen)
Book 4: WINTER