To learn more about my unique reviewing style, read this post.

Here’s a super brief summary of what this book is all about…

Cinderella is a cyborg caught in a world where the magical Lunar ruler threatens war with the technologically advanced Earthen alliance. What’s more the “blue fever” plague is spreading like mad. This world sucks for most of its inhabitants, and being a second class citizen, half-woman, half-machine, yeah, that’s even worse.

Here are my knee-jerk reactions…

5 STARS! I don't assign the 5-star rating willy nilly, and the fact that Cinder gets it should speak volumes! I loved this book and finished it within 36 hours despite the rigorous demands of my work schedule. My last day and a half was like this: work, read, sleep, work, read, sleep, read.

I LOVED Cinder! I think it's safe to say that cyborgs are the new sparkly vampires of YA fiction. And what made this book great was not the updates on the Cinderella myth, it was everything else that was added to the mix--the plague, the cyborg draft, the interplanetary political tension. There was also a push and pull of the science fiction and fantasy genres, making it hard to categorize but fun to watch. The Lunar antagonists employ glamour and the Earthens are all about the technology. Arcadia v Stark, magic v science.

I'm a huge fan of YA (I am a YA author after all), but lately, I've been pretty frustrated with the genre's offerings. Almost everything seems like a repeat of what came before. Oh, vampires sell well, you say? Sure, let's publish some more vampire books. Now werewolves, fey, what-have-you are en vogue? Let's get 'em out there. Hurry, hurry, blah. Thank you, Marissa Meyer for writing something different, and brace yourself because ALL the other guys are gonna copy your fantastic idea. They suck like that, but you—you are fabulous!

You might like this book if…

you’re looking for a kick butt heroine, you love books that have familiar elements while still being awesomely unique, you are a romantic but don’t think romance is the only part of a life worth living, you think robots are cool, you’d love to have an in-built lie detector, you can relate with Cinder on the wicked stepmother front, you believe there’s a man on the moon, you like how the villains can be good-looking and the heroes can be not-so attractive, you like crotchety old science dudes who say funny things without always meaning it, you believe a plague is coming to wipe out the human race and you want to get some ideas on how to prepare, you like classic cars, you’re a fan of China, you think it would be cool to have a pet robot

You might not like this book if…

You want a story that is true to the fairytale and equally fluffy, you’re not a fan of science fiction/ fantasy cross-over, you think it’s tacky when authors derive new books from old story lines, you are afraid of robots, you don’t like books with multiple POVs (even though most of the story is in Cinder’s perspective), you don’t enjoy YA, you think there are too many lost orphans in YA fiction

Other books I would compare it to…

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Once upon a Time (TV show)

 So the big question is:  Are you going to read it?