Wednesday why not read...Cress by Marissa Meyer

Kindle    Nook

Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they are plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and prevent her army from invading Earth. Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl trapped on a satellite since childhood who has only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she is being forced to work for Queen Levana, and she has just received orders to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hurry up and read this, or go slowly to savor it, because it’s at least another year before book four comes out. I ended up taking two days to read it, because that's as slow as I could make myself go. Sigh.

Cress did not disappoint me:

• ·         There was not a lot of back story – thank you!
• ·         Plenty of things happening to keep me interested while moving along the all over story arc
• ·         A satisfying ending
• ·         New characters that fit and expanded the story rather than cluttering it

Cress is not a stand-alone; many of the characters and events will not make sense if you have not read Cinder or Scarlett.

Ms. Meyer weaves in many subtle and overt fairy tale references. Two of my favorites happened with the names of characters.  Cress (short for crescent moon) links to the lettuce stolen in the original Rapunzel which was taken during night, under moonlight.  Captain Thorne links to the the prince who was blinded by falling into thorns in the original story.  

This quote made me smile:

Because if there was one thing Cress knew about heroes, it was that they could not resist a damsel in distress. (p. 27)

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