Review: Winter by Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #4)

Winter (Lunar Chronicles #4)
Marissa Meyer
Published: Nov. 10, 2015 (Feiwel & Friends)
Purchase: Book Depository or Amazon
Review Source: purchased

Reviewed by: Amy

Rating (out of 5): 5 stars

Note: While review will be spoiler free, it will make reference to previous events in the series. If you haven’t started yet, check out VBC’s review of book 1, Cinder.

In Winter we finally meet the famed Lunar Princess who has the people’s hearts, but the disdain of her wicked stepmother. Winter’s beauty runs more than skin deep. And as she refuses to use her Lunar gifts, her beauty is true and not a glamour. But by not using her gifts, she suffers from Lunar sickness, and the hallucinations she experiences are getting worse.

Things are better when her childhood friend and—let’s just cut to the chase—love Jacin is around. Since Jacin has been away lately on assignment for the Queen, Winter has become friendly with her new “pet” Scarlet who is kept in Lunar’s Menagerie.

Going through torture and being held captive has not been fun for Scarlet, but Winter’s kindheartedness and crazy company helps her get through. Things turn hopeful for Scarlet after Winter gets a message from Jacin stating that her friends—Wolf, Cinder, Cress, and Thorne—are coming for her.

Yes, it’s time. Although Cinder will never feel 100 percent ready for the task at hand, they can’t delay the inevitable any longer. It’s time to overthrow Levana and take her rightful place as the Queen of Luna.

The past couple of books in this series (Winter along with its predecessor Cress) have suffered slightly with the fact that the fairy-tale they have been tasked with retelling has kind of gotten overshadowed by the bigger picture. Therefore, I felt like Winter’s story itself was a bit pushed to the side, same as I thought with Cress’ story. I just really loved Winter. She leapt off the page as being so genuine in her feelings for her fellow Lunars, Scarlet (“Scarlet-friend”), and especially Jacin. Her “crazy” just made her even more endearing to me and I wish there had been some way that her character was able to be present throughout the entire series and not just featured in this last book.

It’s probably because of the whopping 800+ page length that I felt Winter had a bit more justice done in her story than Cress did in her own. There was plenty of space for everything to be included and as the book is divided into “Parts” each beginning of each part connects readers back to the tale of Snow White.

Now, as a whole, I have to say this has been one of the most satisfying conclusions to a series that I’ve read in awhile. On top of that, this has been a really strong and satisfying series in general over the course of four (five counting Fairest) books.

The way the book is structured (did you see the page count above?) just flowed along so nicely I never felt like it dragged. Marissa Meyer deftly wove each characters’ interactions together so well. It was rare that our main eight characters were all together at once, but they would be together in varying degrees throughout, and I loved seeing how they would be put together and pulled apart again. I knew the main points that Meyer had to hit based on things that have built up from Cinder and she hit all of them. But where I sat in wonder was the fact that she hit them in places where I didn’t quite expect; usually early on. Then I’d be sitting with the book thinking “well, where is she going next?” and I would always be so surprised with the different directions, and how they built up to the climax. This was definitely an emotional journey.

I think if you’ve read this series, it will be very difficult to finish Winter and not be satisfied with the ending. If you have yet to check this series out, what are you waiting for? It’s amazing! Go now!

Sexual content: So.Much.Kissing!!