Review: Cress

Cress by Marissa Meyer
Grade: A+
Summary: In this third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army. 

Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker—unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice. 

When a daring rescue goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing stop her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only ones who can.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: *Warning* The following review may border on incoherent and fangirlish. Proceed with caution.
What can I say about Cress that will remotely make sense?  I love all four of the heroines.  Cinder and Scarlet are tougher, even with all of Cinder's doubts.  Cress and Winter (side note: I loved the little bit we saw of her, especially the first glimpses) are less sure, gentler, and a little bit insane (with Cress it's more loneliness and naivety; Winter is actually insane, which is fun).  I enjoyed the scenes where Kai was planning for the royal wedding.  All of the settings were awesome; Marissa made me feel like I was actually there without giving too much description.  But basically, this book made me experience a range of emotions.  If you check my Goodreads updates for Cress, there was a lot of rage-y updates and then some excited ones.  I felt like throwing this book against a wall.  My shipper heart fluttered happily several times.  There's a couple big spoilers that I won't say here, but one is absolutely devastating and the other is rage-inducing but also brilliant.  Queen Channery and Queen Levana are downright evil.  I don't care if Levana seemed to truly love her husband (Winter's father); that woman only cares about power.
The realist in me wants to point out one of the few flaws.  Thorne was awesome in Scarlet.  When I found out he was meant for Cress, I was excited to see their relationship develop.  Maybe I'm too attached to Flynn Rider.  Maybe I expected too much of him.  But his personality seemed to change, and he just didn't seem right for Cress, in my opinion.  Hopefully things between them will improve and feel more right in Winter (unless Marissa kills someone off... *gives Marissa a suspicious look*).  Another teeny thing that bothered me was that I feel like the promotion overemphasized saving Cress when, in reality, the book felt more like a mission of saving Kai, since rescuing Cress was only in "book one" of Cress.
As for objectionable content, foul language was pretty much nonexistent (*book shimmy* for Marissa for writing an amazing book series with minimal swearing!), romance was mostly clean, and violence wasn't too descriptive.

The Verdict: READ THIS BOOK NOW.  I WILL PESTER YOU UNTIL YOU DO.  Except...read Cinder and Scarlet first.  Nothing will make sense otherwise.  You will curl up in a ball and cry because you're so lost and confused.  You can read my glowing reviews of them here (but let me just say, I am very grateful I've gotten much better at reviewing).