Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: Review

Title: Scarlet
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Puffin
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

This is not the fairytale you remember.
But it’s one you won’t forget.
Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. The police have closed her case. The only person Scarlet can turn to is Wolf, a street fighter she does not trust, but they are drawn to each other.
Meanwhile, in New Beijing, Cinder will become the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive – when she breaks out of prison to stay one step ahead of vicious Queen Levana.
As Scarlet and Wolf expose one mystery, they encounter Cinder and a new one unravels. Together they must challenge the evil queen, who will stop at nothing to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner . . .

I'm actually finding Scarlet harder to review than Cinder, which says a lot because that one was really hard to write. In the case of Cinder I believe the hype kind of ruined that read for me, I had very high expectations and when it didn't completely meet them I think I judged it a lot more harshly then I would have without the hype. I still gave it four stars because it was brilliantly written, had amazing characters and the most perfect setting but I still felt really disappointed by it for some reason. With Scarlet, I didn't have any expectations and I was enjoying it a lot more than Cinder at the start, it's around the halfway mark that it lost my interest.

I have to start by saying that Meyer is a fantastic writer, she really is. The settings are just incredible in her books and she really describes it in such a way that you can't help but visualise it perfectly in your mind. That's a sign of a very talented author for me because I usually struggle to visualise a lot of what I read, but I had no issues with that when reading Cinder and Scarlet.

I actually really loved Scarlet to begin with, I was enjoying it a lot more than Cinder. I felt that Scarlet was a brilliant character, she's very headstrong and she can definitely stick up for herself when she needs too. She was determined to get what she wanted and I really came to love her character. I also enjoyed the introduction of Wolf and very quickly went from thinking he was maybe a little psycho to thinking that I maybe wanted to marry the guy. I felt really let down by our love interest of Kai in Cinder because, let's be honest, he just kind of sucked. But Wolf I felt was actually believable and he was given much more of a personality.

I also liked that we still kept track of Cinder and her story. I was actually surprised by how disappointed I was that we didn't spend more time with her character. She meets Carswell Thorne when she falls into his cell during a breakout attempt, they team up with each other in order to escape. I thought their story was really interesting and I would have been happy to stick with that for an entire book. Thorne is a really hilarious character and I loved his one liners that would get me giggling. 

We still get to see Kai in this as well and his struggle with Queen Levana, sadly I still wasn't interested. I just find his character really dull and boring. I don't see him as a love interest for Cinder, so I hope that's not where his storyline is going. I kind of want Queen Levana to kill him because he's really useless. Queen Levana herself confuses me. I don't understand why she needs Kai and the Commonwealth. She has an army that seems capable of taking over the world by force, so why doesn't she just do that. She could then just glamour everyone to her submission like we are led to believe she is able to do on the moon. I am just confused by this and the extent of her power and army. 

I loved Scarlet, up until the halfway mark and then it went down hill a bit. I admit that I am in a really bad reading slump right now so that never helps. But, it just got really boring for me at the time when it should have seemed like the most exciting. I feel like the book is really long and my interest waned as it went on and on and on and on. Yes, there was a lot going on which may warrant the length but maybe there was too much going on. I lost interest by about 300 pages and then seemed to have to force myself to finish. In my opinion the book could have done with being about 100 pages shorter. 

4/5 Butterflies

I am still giving Scarlet 4 Butterflies because, even though I had my issues with it, I believe it deserves those 4 Butterflies. I can't fault the characters, the storyline is really brilliant, the slow growing romance in this worked so well for me and I was loving this for a lot of the book. A reading slump has made it hard for me to concentrate and keep interested in a book so I think that didn't help me when reading a book that's almost 500 pages long. I really did enjoy this but I had my issues with it, if you loved Cinder then you won't be disappointed by this.