Scarlet by Marissa Meyer Review

Scarlet

By Marissa Meyer

Book two of The Lunar Chronicles

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: YA Fiction, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Romance

Scarlet follows on from the events of book one of The Lunar Chronicles (review here), so make sure you read that book first.

The towering skyscrapers of New Beijing dropped away and then it was only him and the sky and the endless landscape of space.

Scarlet Benoit's grandmother has been missing for two and a half weeks and the case has been dismissed by the police, but Scarlet knows something is wrong: her grandmother wouldn't just leave her. So when she meets a mysterious street-fighter named Wolf who has information on the whereabouts of her grandmother, she decides she has to trust him in order to find out what he knows. Wolf does not seem like the average Earthen citizen - he's never even eaten a tomato before and there's a strange tattoo on his wrist. But he's Scarlet's only hope of finding her grandmother, who she would do anything for, so the unlikely duo make their way to Paris, where the Wolf is certain they will find her. 

Meanwhile, Cinder begins her escape from the inside of a cell in New Beijing. When she accidentally drops into an occupied cell during her journey out, she meets Carswell Thorne, American heartthrob and pilot-gone-rogue. Cinder realises that it would take too much time and she might not even be able to use her Lunar skill of bioelectricity manipulation to wipe Carswell's memory, so she reluctantly brings him along with her, telling him that she is Lunar, but not that she is the lost Princess Selene. Using the ship Carswell left in New Beijing when he was arrested, Cinder takes them to Rieux, France on a hunt for a woman who is rumoured to have housed Princess Selene when she first came to Earth, Michelle Benoit. The same woman who went missing and is now being searched for by her granddaughter, Scarlet, and Wolf. 

The two pairs are coming ever closer to one another as they seek answers to separate questions that are perhaps not as different as they seem. Will they be able to unravel the mysteries before it is too late to save Earth, and Prince Kai, from Queen Levana?

"I'll take it," said Thorne, stretching out on the floor beside her and enjoying the cold hardness of the dock's floor, the obnoxiously glaring lights overhead, the stink of sewage on their clothes, and the perfect sensation of freedom. 

*spoilers ahead*

I'm going to be honest, I think that Scarlet just wasn't as good as Cinder. I was very hopeful when I started the book that Marissa Meyer had written a better story than her first in the series since I'd seen so many positive reviews of it, but, to me, Scarlet was a lot worse. The start of the book was boring and confusing as the reader is suddenly taken away from Cinder and dumped in the middle of France with no explanation, only to meet, in my opinion, a rather whiny and annoying character who seemed to be stuck on only one topic: her grandmother. I didn't like Scarlet at all when I was reading Book 1, she was constantly complaining about one family member going missing, but then when her father appeared, clearly having been tortured for information about her grandmother, she complained about that too! I eventually came to like Scarlet towards the end of the book, but I found myself constantly bored of the parts that she appeared in. 

Something else that irked me was that it felt like the story didn't really start until I was about two-thirds through the book. There wasn't very much action or anything really going on for a large portion of the book, which bored me and made me want to put the book down as I read Books 1, 2 and some of 3. Once the story did get going (for me once Scarlet had been captured by the Lunar Special Operatives and Cinder and Carswell Thorne were on their way to Paris) I did enjoy it, which stopped my rating of the book from going down any lower. The first two-thirds just felt too much like filler and there wasn't enough happening to interest me - it was obvious from the ending of the first book that Cinder would escape and want to know more about her own past, and, as I said before, I really disliked the character Scarlet. 

One thing that sticks out to me that I did enjoy, however, was the fight scene in Paris. It was a great was of showing Cinder being truly forced to have to use her skill in manipulating bioelectricity for the first time, and making the two duos meet each other for the first time during the battle gave them an interesting look at each other. My favourite part of the battle scene for sure was the role Iko played as their ship, Rampion. Meyer's decision to bring her back by putting her inside the ship was one that I liked from the start, Iko has a great personality and she brings a little more fun to the story. Having the ship being able to move about and be controlled by her gave the battle an interesting dynamic, and proved that Iko is still as much as a character and can fight as a well as any of the non-android characters. 

So, whilst I would recommend reading Scarlet if you've already read Cinder and want to know what happens next, I'd advise going into it knowing that it might be boring to read at the beginning, so you have to put a little more effort in than with Cinder.

All Cinder had ever wanted was freedom. Freedom from her stepmother and her overbearing rules. Freedom from a life of constant work with nothing to show for it. Freedom from the sneers and hateful words of strangers who didn't trust the cyborg girl who was too strong and too smart and too freakishly good with machines to ever be normal.

Now she had her freedom - but it wasn't like anything she'd envisioned.