Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Oct 04, 2013 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dystopian-and-post-apocalyptic, young-adult, based-on-a-folk-tale, fantasy-and-sci-fi, sf-romance, maybe

This book is the best yet! I was sad when I finished this. It was just THAT good.

When it starts, it seems like everything is going well, all neat and tidy. And then it all falls apart, and the adventure begins again! The entire book is non-stop action. Meyer - amazingly - skillfully - tracks the stories of four separate groups (Kai, Cinder, Cress, and Scarlet, basically, although at some points groups re-form), and I was never - not once - annoyed or impatient or confused. I was just happily tur This book is the best yet! I was sad when I finished this. It was just THAT good.

When it starts, it seems like everything is going well, all neat and tidy. And then it all falls apart, and the adventure begins again! The entire book is non-stop action. Meyer - amazingly - skillfully - tracks the stories of four separate groups (Kai, Cinder, Cress, and Scarlet, basically, although at some points groups re-form), and I was never - not once - annoyed or impatient or confused. I was just happily turning pages, devouring this book, but yet knowing that I didn't want it to end.

There is nothing I did not like about this book, so it's hard for me to come up with must to say other than "yay!" and "squeeee" and "more, please!"

But let's see what I can find to say about it ... It's non-stop action! Yes, there is a touch of romance, since each of the four fairytale heroines has her corresponding hero, but they don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it. There is one passionate kiss on a rooftop in the middle of a fight-to-the-death among a dozen or so people ... and there is one passionate kiss in a spaceship ... But mostly, there is edge-of-your seat ACTION and ADVENTURE as Cinder and her (literally) ragtag group of rebels desperately try to overthrow the evil Queen Levana.

My young daughters are very interested in these books (although they are still a little too young to want to sit down with what looks like such a long book - but I highly recommend them to them in another year or two!!!), and they ask about the parallels with the classic fairy tales. Of course Cinder = Cinderella, that name was obvious, and Scarlet = Red Riding Hood wasn't too hard (and I LOVE that she still has her red hoodie in Cress), but why "Cress"? As best as I can figure it out: in one picture book we read, the husband was stealing a leafy green called rapunzel from the witch's garden, because that was the only food his pregnant wife would eat - when the witch caught him and demanded his first born baby, she named the baby Rapunzel for the greens that had been stolen. And so ... Rapunzel ... garden vegetable ... Cress! I'm wondering if that's how others see it too?

I really enjoyed Thorne in this book - he annoyed me a bit in Scarlet, so this is a nice surprise. There was a lot of humor (mostly sarcastic humor) throughout, but he got the funniest lines.

Also, I think it's really neat (maybe even downright masterful, but perhaps that's going too far) how Ms Meyer has slowly expanded our view of this world. In Cinder, we saw the city of New Beijing. In Scarlet, the story expands to include all of Earth (mostly New Beijing and Paris). And now in Cress, the story expands out to satellites orbiting earth, and just touches on the Moon. And then in Winter, it looks like the story will include Earth, the Moon, and perhaps the solar system. It's like ripples, slowly spreading out ... ...more

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Dec 04, 2013 stephanie rated it liked it

Shelves: would-rec, young-adult, dystopian, paranormal, kindle, winter-challenge-ya-2013, 2014

so . . . i really liked this book. but i didn't like cress as much as i wanted to, as a character, but i think that's because i'm not a romantic at heart. i couldn't relate all that much. (also because if i was stuck on a satellite for seven years with net access, i would have read quite. a. few. books. and would have been even more awkward with people.)

but i loved the way the other characters developed. i loved that the group was split, and had to learn how to deal with new strengths and new we ...more

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Apr 28, 2020 Jaime rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya-science-fiction, read-2020

This is the 3rd book in Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series, which is a fun series. The primary character in each book is very loosely based on a fairy tale character. First we had Cinder (Cinderella), then Scarlet (Little Red Riding Hood) and now Cress, who represents Rapunzel.

Like Rapunzel, Cress is trapped in her tower, except in this case the tower is a satellite in the moon's orbit. She is a Lunar shell, which means she doesn't have the mind manipulation powers of the other Lunar people. Every ...more

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Mar 09, 2014 Genesis Hansen rated it liked it

An enjoyable addition to the series. A little more suspension of disbelief required for some of the plot points in this book, but I plan to keep reading the series.

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