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A review by kristenbooks
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
3.0
7.28.20 update: rating changed to 3.5/5. This was a solid book that I quite liked.
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Edit 8-18-15: I decided to lower my rating on this down to 8/10.
[Check out my post on the whole series here]
Scarlet is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Scarlet mostly takes place in France and is focused upon our newest main character, Scarlet (go figure). Her grandmother disappeared shortly before the beginning of this book, and alongside a mysterious new companion named Wolf, Scarlet attempts to discover what happened to her grandmother.
My opinions on the characters in this book are a bit more ambiguous than my opinions on the characters in Cinder. In general, I think that I would say that I like both Wolf and Scarlet, but I still feel slightly hesitant to even say that. Maybe I just haven't fully formed my opinion on them. I think I can definitively say that between all of the important characters presented within the first two books, Cinder is my favorite. With Captain Thorne (a new character introduced in Scarlet) as a close second. I thought he was annoying at first, but he's grown on me quite a bit. The guy never fails to make me laugh.
One thing that the book did really well was integrating Scarlet's story with the continuation of Cinder's. When I started the series, I was under the impression that each novel was going to be a succinct story that all fit together to form an overarching plot, and that is definitely not the situation at all. It's clear at the end of Cinder that her story is not yet complete and that made me really curious to see how the back and forth was handled within the coming books. And, like I said, I thought that the two plots were integrated really nicely.
Like with Cinder, the original tale is definitely recognizable, but never overbearing, which (as I said before) I really enjoyed. Overall, I enjoyed the book and had minor problems with it. I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Cinder. I thought Cinder's plot was more exciting and its characters more interesting and just overall enjoyed it more than Scarlet.
---------
Edit 8-18-15: I decided to lower my rating on this down to 8/10.
[Check out my post on the whole series here]
Scarlet is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Scarlet mostly takes place in France and is focused upon our newest main character, Scarlet (go figure). Her grandmother disappeared shortly before the beginning of this book, and alongside a mysterious new companion named Wolf, Scarlet attempts to discover what happened to her grandmother.
My opinions on the characters in this book are a bit more ambiguous than my opinions on the characters in Cinder. In general, I think that I would say that I like both Wolf and Scarlet, but I still feel slightly hesitant to even say that. Maybe I just haven't fully formed my opinion on them. I think I can definitively say that between all of the important characters presented within the first two books, Cinder is my favorite. With Captain Thorne (a new character introduced in Scarlet) as a close second. I thought he was annoying at first, but he's grown on me quite a bit. The guy never fails to make me laugh.
One thing that the book did really well was integrating Scarlet's story with the continuation of Cinder's. When I started the series, I was under the impression that each novel was going to be a succinct story that all fit together to form an overarching plot, and that is definitely not the situation at all. It's clear at the end of Cinder that her story is not yet complete and that made me really curious to see how the back and forth was handled within the coming books. And, like I said, I thought that the two plots were integrated really nicely.
Like with Cinder, the original tale is definitely recognizable, but never overbearing, which (as I said before) I really enjoyed. Overall, I enjoyed the book and had minor problems with it. I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Cinder. I thought Cinder's plot was more exciting and its characters more interesting and just overall enjoyed it more than Scarlet.