Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Cinder:
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer was an incredibly well imagined and unique retelling of the Cinderella fairytale. This book has everything a reader could need: science fiction, romance, mystery and an evil queen. I enjoyed the fact that most of the fairytale resemblances were right in your face, while others you had to really look under the surface to see them, it really kept me intrigued from start to finish. Right from the beginning it was the extraordinary character of Cinder that drew me into this book. Marissa is a wonderful storyteller and I felt every emotion as if they were my own, and the story flows at such a quick pace that before I knew it I reached the last page. Marissa definitely didn’t hold anything back with her characters, there were no “just because” easy solutions, every action came with a consequence and sometimes those were completely opposite of your typical “happily ever after.” The world could have been developed a little more for my liking, but the characters were so intriguing that they overshadowed that small defect in the story. The rags-to-riches tale in the original Cinderella tale is more muted in Cinder, however it is there, but what surprised me the most was the slightly abrupt ending. Mind you, it does open your mind to the next book: Scarlet which I can’t wait to get my hands on.