Scarlet by Marissa Meyer Review

Summary:

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.

My rating: Two and a half worms!

I was finally able read the sequel to Cinder, Scarlet that tells the story of red riding Hood in a futuristic world!

 I have to be honest, I had forgotten how satisfactory it was to actually continue with a series and reuniting with the characters to see them dwell in new adventures. I had missed it, especially when every series I had read had been so unmemorable that I didn’t want to read past the first book.

Now, there are some improvements in Scarlet, especially as we already know most of the characters, but unfortunately for me this was not as good as Cinder and most of it had to do with the protagonist herself.

When we first meet Scarlet she is a farmer with a habit of cleaning tomato stains in her jeans (She did that EVERYTIME she had tomato in her hands and it drove me crazy, why not a napkin or tissue? 

The tomato acid destroys the cotton’s cellulose making it impossible for the stains to come off AND she would have to drive everywhere with sticky wet jeans, eww.) who is also upset because her grandmother is missing and the police is doing nothing about it, believing she left town by her own means instead of Scarlet’s suspicions that she was taken against her will. When she gets home and finds her estranged father in a state of shock and mumbling about the torture he went through, Scarlet realizes that there is more to her grandmother’s disappearance that she first thought and so she sets off to find her, accompanied by a guy named Wolf who may know more than he lets on.

Now, I think it was admirable that Scarlet went to such lengths to get her grandmother back, it shows a lot of determination and courage and I respect that. However, Scarlet was my biggest problem with the book, because regardless of the actions mentioned above, that doesn’t make up for her pettiness, hypocrisy and down right stupidity.

Scarlet reminded me a lot off Celeana Sardotien from Throne of Glass, and that is never a good comparison. She had the same habit of speaking up to people when she shouldn’t, simply because she thought she was being brave for doing so, instead of dumb. She blamed people for things she caused and was incredibly gullible.

Her grandmother was missing and she suddenly comes across a stranger with a weird personality and who is prone to violent attacks but, instead of being suspicious, Scarlet thrust him right away. Funny thing is, there is no love at first sight but once Wolf is forced to confess that he had been lying to her the whole time she falls instantly in love with him.

“It’s true I know more than I told you, actually I was send to get info from you, and was part of the group that came here to take your grandma… but I’m totally sorry now, I swear.”

Expected reaction:

What we get:

I simply don’t get the logic behind the characters sometimes. Scarlet knew that Wolf was one of the bad guys AND that he was there to get info from her but she doesn’t think he might still be doing that? The fact that she falls in love with him one day after she learns of his betrayal makes no sense and it only made me hate her (her pettiness didn’t help).

Also, I don’t know what is it with these people and their inability to realize that Cinder is princess Selene. Wolf and Scarlet had to take the prize on most clueless, they knew that Selene had been rescued by a man of a last name Lihn and they knew that there was an escaped Lunar with that last name and who was desperately being searched by Queen Levana… I mean, it’s not that hard.

 In the end Wolf wasn’t such a bad guy, so he made up for the crappy relationship between him and 

Scarlet but I would have been 100% on board with it if they took her out of it, just a nice single Wolf, or at least a better love interest.

Now, on to the good stuff! We not only get chapters from Scarlet’s point of view but also from Cinder and Kai!

We get to see more of Cinder and Thorne, and man! It is really nice to see a relationship between straight people of the opposite sex not leading up to romance. Cinder is conflicted with her newly found Lunar powers, especially since she seems to enjoy using them but thinks that is something bad. 

Her inner struggle was interesting, and I loved it because she really liked her power (Unlike so many heroines who think they are monsters for it) and tried to handle it so she could use it but not hurt other people. Also, she decided she would stop feeling sorry for herself, so yeay!!

Then there is Kai, sweet and dumb Kai. I’m sorry but he is the perfect example of why there shouldn’t be monarchies in the future. I know he’s trying to be great at his job and that he really cares about his people, but he’s extremely inexperienced and unprepared for this posicion. My favorite part was, after the Lunars attacks, when he gave a conference saying “Yeah, you know those people who murdered thousands of citizens in a matter of seconds? Well, turns out they have always been on Earth, we just chose to pretend they weren’t here letting them pull together an army to massacre us all. Peace out.”

No honey, you can’t say that on national television. Eventually his plan to stop the Lunar invasion was well intentioned… but it simply made things worse for the Earth.

To be honest nothing really happened in this book, we didn’t learn anything significant or important to the plot or the characters.

The next book is Cress that is about the girl Cinder talked to in the first book. Has any of you guys read it? What did you think? And what did you think of Scarlet?