"Scarlet" by Marissa Meyer

**Spoilers!**

In the book, Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer, she continues to expand the story and world she set in Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles. Scarlet focuses on a retelling of the "Little Red Riding Hood" fairytale, introducing Scarlet Benoit, a young woman whose grandmother has mysteriously disappeared. Soon, Scarlet realizes that this mystery is much larger than just her grandmother, and enfolds years of agression and tension built up between Earth and the Lunars, as well as the one person who could stop the threat of war. The missing Lunar, Princess Selene.

I finally read it! Yeah me!

So this book has been sitting on my Nook for weeks, and last week, I finally started to read it. I was so excited, and the book lived up to my expectations greatly.

As I mentioned in the first Lunar Chronicles book, the books are futuristic retellings of some of the most familiar fairytales, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. One of my favorite part of these books so far is the imaginative setting revamp. The world of the five nations in future-Earth is so vivid and well planned out. The prejudices, actions and thoughts of them as a society have been really thought out and still resonated clearly in Scarlet, which was interesting. I thought maybe because it was a whole different country, and each country was so large, the cultures would vary largely country to country.

One thing I did want to learn a little more about was France, specifically, in the book. We learned a lot about New Beijing in the first book, and had vivid imagery to go along with the new culture we learned about. Though this book was still descriptive, I wanted to learn more about Paris, farmland area France, and customs of the French in this universe.

Another thing I wanted to see, though less of, is the Wolf-Scarlet romance. I enjoy the relationship, and it was fun to see grow, and I have nothing against it, it was a little cheesy to see the last couple scenes with them and even the middle of the book. They barely know each other, but almost seem ready to get married. I get that the Prince Kai-Cinder relationship couldn't continue as a key plot point, but it kind of set the mood of the story. This is a series about girls not obsessed with love, ready to do what is important overall first. Scarlet is a strong character, but how fast she changes from not trusting Wolf, at all, to being head-over-heels for him, seems completely out of the character established at the beginning of the book. The Wolf and Scarlet relationship made this feel a little bit like Twilight. Oh no!

Overall, I still loved the book, and would recommend it to fans of the Hunger Games, fairytales, and sci-fi. Please, if you find this interesting, read the first book first. It won't make much sense otherwise!