Winter - Marissa Meyer (Review)

Winter - Marissa Meyer
Series The Lunar Chronicles #4
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy
Publication date:  Nov 10, 2015
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Format: Audio 23 hours, 4 minutes
How I got it: My public library 
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble 
My rating: 4/5 

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mark her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won't approve of her feelings for her childhood friend--the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn't as weak as Levana believes her to be and she's been undermining her stepmother's wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that's been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters? Fans will not want to miss this thrilling conclusion to Marissa Meyer's national bestselling Lunar Chronicles series.

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My thoughts:

I couldn’t wait to get approved for the audio for the last book in The Lunar Chronicles and now that it has come to an end I still want more!  Although the author does an amazing job summing everything up at the ending!  

Winter follows Cinder and her group as they go to Luna to stop Levana and make Cinder the rightful Queen.   Cinder wants to reclaim Luna as her own and take Levana’s throne, which is rightfully hers anyway.  

I loved Cinder in this book.  She came into her own and has overcome so much to get to this point in her life.  She is still young and not a lot of time has passed during the series, but it is like she has grown into an entirely different stronger character.  Cinder is putting everything on the line in this book and she is constantly making sure she is doing this for the better of Luna and not focused on herself at all.   The hard part for Cinder is that Levana has a large control on the country and she needs to work on infiltrating her control. 

I loved how the author paired all the characters up with partners and in this book, they ended up being separated a lot.  I liked that through the separating of the partners the story kept flowing, they would sometimes be thinking about each other, but other times they were totally focused on the mission at hand.   My favorite pair would have to be Scarlet and Wolf as they spent the most time apart, but the strength that they showed is great to read about.   

Winter is a new character that is added to the mix in this book and she fits in perfectly.  Winter lost her father at a young age and Levana has been her stepmother almost since she was born.  Winter had a very traumatic time with Levana, but tried to always look for the positive.  I feel Winter brought with her a lot of hope to the mission and making it successful.

Levana is at her greatest during this book she is always trying to out think Cinder and show that she is Queen.  Levana shows us how far of lengths she is willing to go so she can stay in power.   The author did an amazing job creating a perfect villain you love to hate!

Marissa does an amazing job throughout this series creating an entire world that she brings to life with her writing.  This book takes place almost entirely on Luna, which is some place we haven’t been before with the author.  The author takes her time to go into details about Luna that helped create a picture in my mind of exactly what this moon colony is like.  I also liked to hear about the conditions on Luna that not every sector was equal and their transportation system.  It was interesting hearing all these details because it helped to create an entire new world.

I think my one complaint was this audio was very long and there were some drawn out parts where I think it could have been shortened to make the story flow a little better.  We do have a lot of action that happens in this book that sort of goes back and forth between the characters to create more drama and I think some of it could have been cut out.   I did love listening to all the action but there were at least two parts where I thought I had to be done with the audio, but still had hours to go.

I suggest this as a vacation read.  It was so easy to get lost listening to this audio and not want to do anything else.  It was a great story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end. 

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About the Author

One of my first spoken words was “story” (right along with “bath” and “cookie”), my favorite toy as an infant was a soft, squishable book, and I’ve wanted to be a writer since I first realized such a job existed.
When I was fourteen my best friend introduced me to anime and fanfiction—over the years I would complete over forty Sailor Moon fanfics under the penname Alicia Blade. Those so inclined can still find my first stories at fanfiction.net. Writing fanfic turned out to be awesome fun and brought me in contact with an amazing group of fanfiction readers and writers. As Alicia Blade, I also had a novelette, “The Phantom of Linkshire Manor,” published in the gothic romance anthology Bound in Skin (CatsCurious Press, 2007).

When I was sixteen I worked at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Tacoma, Washington, affectionately termed “The Spag.” (Random factoid: This is also the restaurant where my parents met some 25 years before.) I attended Pacific Lutheran University where I sorted mail that came to the dorm, carted tables and chairs around campus, and took writing classes, eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Children’s Literature. Knowing I wanted a career in books, I would also go on to receive a Master’s degree in Publishing from Pace University (which you can learn more about here). After graduation, I worked as an editor in Seattle for a while before becoming a freelance typesetter and proofreader.

Then, day of days, someone thought it would be a good idea to give me a book deal, so I became a full-time writer. CINDER is my first novel, though I have an adorable collection of unfinished ones lying around too.

I now live with my husband and our three cats (Calexandria Josephine, Stormus Enormous, and Blackland Rockwell III), who go in and out, in and out, about eight hundred times a day. My favorite non-bookish things include Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, re-watching episodes of Firefly, and playing all manners of dress-up.

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