Scarlet follows on from Cinder in the same updated fairy tale style. After her memorable showdown at the ball and subsequent arrest, Linh Cinder escaped from jail, and is being hunted by just about everyone on Earth. Against this backdrop Scarlet Benoit is trying to find her grandmother, who went missing from her farm in France a couple of weeks ago.
In Scarlet, the POV switches between Scarlet and Cinder as Scarlet tries to track down her kidnapped grandmother and Cinder attempts to discover the truth about her past. Needless to say, neither plan goes as smoothly as the girls hope and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that eventually everyone’s paths cross in spectacular style.
Again, the female leads in Scarlet are really strong (good!) and don’t take any rubbish from anyone, but they don’t derive their strength at the expense of the male characters (especially Carswell Thorne - my new Book Boyfriend). There are no out-of-place characters, or characters who are just there as filler. Everyone has their part to play and everyone has their own strengths and flaws.
There was this one point, when Cinder is escaping from prison and she meets rogue spaceship cadet, petty larcenist and all-round super-rake, Carswell Thorne, with his foppish hair and boyish charm, when I thought, ‘Melissa Meyer - don’t do this to me! Don’t give me a LOVE TRIANGLE! No! Nooooo!’
And she didn’t.
Because I would have had to knock a star off for that.
It’s like the author keeps introducing these little things that make me think, ‘Ah, finally. I’ve found a flaw in this series’, only to have her whip away the cloth and reveal the potential flaw as something cool instead.
Like Cinder, I knew how the story of Red Riding Hood goes, but I still chewed my nails wanting to know what happens next. How? How does she do that? And don’t get me started on the bit (about 40% in) when I remembered what happens to the wolf...
On my review of Cinder, I said that I was glad I’d left it late to read this series because I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it if I had to wait a year between these books. Seriously. These books are like literary crack. I’m looking at my reading list and seeing Cress, Fairest and her three Wattpad short stories and I’m getting clammy hands and heart palpitations, thinking, ‘That’s not going to last me until Winter comes out in November.’
See? This is what happens when you let books take over your life.
10/10