“She’s our lost princess. And she’s coming home.”

Cinderella vs. The Evil Queen – The Final Showdown | Winter by Marissa Meyer [Book Review]

★★★★☆ • 4 / 5 stars

The #1 New York Times Bestselling Series

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar 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.

Note: I’ve read and reviewed the first three books in The Lunar Chronicles. You can read them here: Cinder Review | Scarlet Review | Cress Review

What an incredible end to an incredible series. It wasn’t my favorite book in The Lunar Chronicles, but I still really enjoyed it.

Winter is a 2015 novel by Marissa Meyer, published by Feiwel & Friends. It’s 827 pages in length, and is the conclusion to The Lunar Chronicles. And the genres, as per usual with this series, are YA fantasy and science fiction.

Stuff I Liked

I really loved how all the characters finally came together, and were reunited with one another. The Rampion crew has been separated into different duos and trio since Scarlet, and I was honestly getting a little tired of it.

Another thing I really enjoyed about the book was, as usual with TLC, the characters themselves. Thorne and Iko are always joys to follow, even when not in their POVs, and I really liked the “new” characters as well.

“I fear tomorrow will be even more difficult for you, Sir Clay. Do try to think of me when you can.”

“Try, Princess?” He smirked, meeting her gaze again. “I can’t seem to think of much else.”

I really liked Winter. She’s my favorite protagonist after Scarlet, and I wish that she would’ve had more screentime. She was an extremely interesting person, and her relationship with Jacin was adorable. (I would’ve also liked to see a little more of that, but it’s not something that really irritated me either.) I understand that this was the grand finale and that it was time to wrap the story up – not to mention the book was 800+ freaking pages already – so I completely get why there wasn’t more time for some character moments with these two.

Speaking of Scarlet, it was also really awesome to see her kicking ass and taking names again. She didn’t really do much in Cress, which kind of gave me a little whiplash after how important she was in her debut novel. It mostly felt like Meyer was setting the stage with her for Winter.

But the stage had been set, and she was back in an active role here, which I loved. Her reunion with Wolf was also everything I had hoped for.

I also loved seeing Cinder’s character arc finally complete itself. It was amazing to watch her grow and change as a character, and it made me glad that I finally finished this series.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t fight like this, or start a revolution, or be a queen. I can’t do anything like this. I’m broken. I’m literally broken.”

Iko settled a hand on Cinder’s shoulder. “Yeah, but broken isn’t the same as unfixable.”

And before I forget and move on to the cons, I really should mention the plot. And the writing in general.

The plot was fast-paced and engaging as all of the other books were (though there were a few things I didn’t care for – we’ll get to that). And there were some nods to Snow White this time because… Winter was essentially sci-fi Snow White. I also really liked the theme that the book focused on: how beauty is what is inside and has nothing to do with one’s appearance.

Meyer’s writing was wonderful as always. I love her lush, but not overly detailed, descriptions. I adore her dialogue between her characters – it just reads as so natural. Just. She’s a fantastic author.

And Now, For the Stuff I Didn’t Like

As I mentioned above, I would’ve liked Winter to have more screentime. But that isn’t what I wanted to complain about. The thing that I wanted to complain about was how the Snow White retelling was pretty much glossed over here.

And I get it, Meyer had a whole plot to resolve. But after three books that heavily referenced and borrowed from the fairytales they were based on, it felt like there was just so much less of that in Winter.

I also didn’t like all of the fridging going on here. I won’t mention any names or scenes, so as not to spoil anything, but there was fridging here and I didn’t appreciate how it was handled.

And, last but not least, I think that the main cast has gotten a little bit too bloated. Don’t get me wrong – I love the characters that Marissa Meyer has created, but there were just a few too many.

But yeah, I think that’s it for my criticisms. There wasn’t really much that I didn’t like about it.

Final Thoughts

And they all lived happily to the end of their days.

I really enjoyed my time with Winter, despite some of the stuff that bugged me, and I really liked The Lunar Chronicles as a whole. The beginning was good, the middle was even better, and the end of the series was satisfying.

I recommend this to fans of other books of Meyer’s, fairytale retellings (and retellings in general), fantasy, sci-fi, and YA. It has a lot to offer a lot of different people, and is very well written.

Thanks for reading and have an amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar