Clare Reviews: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Title: Winter

Author: Marissa Meyer

Series: The Lunar Chronicles #4

Format: Paperback

Pages: 823

Rating: 4.5/5

Blurb: Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

"She was prettier than a bouquet of roses and crazier than a headless chicken. Fitting in was not an option."

It took me a while to read this book. I was in a reading slump before I started it and probably an 800+ page book wasn't the best idea for pulling me out of it. But I loved Cinder, Scarlet and Cress and I was just beyond excited for Winter. 

Character-wise this has always been a strong series. With quite a large cast of characters it's amazing that none of them felt boring or flat in any way. All the characters are unique and strong and I love them all in different ways. Although, like many others I think, Cress and Thorne may be my favourites. We haven't really seen much of Winter in the previous books and she was definitely a character I grew to care about. I would say I never felt like I really got to know Jacin outside of his devotion to Winter but Winter herself was brilliantly flawed and someone to root for.

The plot was relatively fast paced for such a long book and whilst it definitely did feel long it wasn't boring and there weren't really any spots where it dragged. There was a lot of planning and a relatively short battle but that seems realistic and the battle itself was very tense. I wanted all of the characters to come out of the battle completely unscathed, which of course is a fairly unrealistic hope so I was on the edge of my seat hoping for the best. 

I really liked how all of the individual stories resolved, it felt true to them and their characters. However, I hadn't fully anticipated just how much I would already be missing these characters and this world. Despite how glad I am about how everything ended there is still a part of me that wishes it wasn't over. And that part of me is extremely happy that there will be a short story collection released soon. 

As sad as I am to see this series end and to say goodbye to characters I have really grown to love, I am very pleased with how everything was wrapped up and I know that I will be re-reading this series and enjoying it just as much again. I do wish there had been more of Cress and Thorne and I hope there will be more of them in the future. But I am also excited to see what new worlds and stories Marissa Meyer can come up with next.

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