I have to say, I didn’t adore Cress as much as I did the other two books. There. It’s out. Throw things at me if you like, but I didn’t. It’s not that it was bad - I mean, I’ve still given it four stars, which means it’s better than plenty of other books out there - but it definitely lacked a certain something compared to Cinder and Scarlet.
The plot was okay. There were a few really good action scenes, including one near the beginning where the crew of the Rampion all get split up, and the last 20% of the book was pretty darn awesome. The middle of the book fell a bit flat, though. As I mentioned, the crew all get split up quite early in the book so after that there was a whole bunch of wandering around, trying to find each other again, which didn’t really make for a thrilling story. (By the way, it’s probably not much of a spoiler to say that they do all find each other again by the biggest random coincidence going! I don’t think I’ve ever read such a random coincidence!)
Don’t get me wrong, like I said this is still a good book. Marissa Meyer’s writing can pull an average plot up and make it a bit more special, but compared to Cinder and Scarlet, I didn’t think the middle chunk of Cress was that great.
I wasn’t really blown away by the characterisation, either. Again, I’m not saying it was bad, it’s just the characters didn’t really seem to develop as much as they have done previously. They’re still fun and interesting, but nothing new really gets added. I still adore Iko, am secretly crushing on Thorne and want to be Cinder when I grow up, but Thorne is still a rake, Iko is still a Kardashian-wannabe and Cinder is still a fab mix of brave and insecure and I didn’t really see any new facets of their personalities.
So yeah. My least favourite in the series so far, but it’s still better than a whole bunch of other books I’ve read.
4 stars