Winter

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Rounded up because I loved the series, the characters are fantastic, and the couples are cute. But when you're reading through 800 pages and things are starting to get repetitive, you will notice. There are so many glamour and mind control tricks that I got tired of it after a while. In fact, the entire finale is mostly a battle of mind control with Cinder's friends coming one by one—basically giving Levana plenty of chances to screw them up.

I don't know. I didn't like it. It felt like they have to face all these things for the sake of having obstacles before the happy ending. It was good, but not as epic as I was expecting.

The other issue I had lies with Winter. Jacin and Winter are side characters in their own book. She sounded awesome in Cress and I really wanted to love her as much as I love Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress... but there are far too many things about her that bothered me. Winter suffers from severe hallucinations because she refuses to use her Lunar gift, but when her mind is stable, she's a bit coquettish. I liked that.

What I didn't like was how naïve she is. She trusts others easily for no apparent reason (other than because she's nice and kind), but she also puts the people around her into a lot of trouble. They have to help her whenever she's hallucinating, and yet she often wanders off without telling anyone. Like in the poisoned apple scene. It's exactly like the original scene in Snow White. IT WAS SO FORCED, and it makes Winter seem really dumb.

Don't get me wrong though, I loved the book. It's just not as great as I wanted it to be. Then again, maybe I'm just being nitpicky because The Lunar Chronicles is an amazing series and I think it deserves better.