Book Review: Fairest (The Lunar Chronicles #3.5) by Marissa Meyer

Title                    : Fairest

Author                : Marissa Meyer

Page                    : 220 pages

Language            : English

Series                  : The Lunar Chronicles #3.5

Rating                 : 5/5

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all?

MY REVIEW

FAIREST is about the evil queen; Queen Levana in the Lunar Chronicles Series. A bridge book between Cress and Winter. I suggest you not to read this if you haven’t read the book until the third installment. This book tells history of Levana’s life. Why and how she became such evil and manipulated following her troubled childhood and adolescent days before she met Cinder and Prince Kai. A dedicated book for evil character, that’s new.

The young Levana is…. pathetic, pitiful, and so sick at mind. A complete psychopath.

"Levana had not seen the bodies, but she had seen the bedrooms the next morning, and her first thought was that all that blood would make for a very pretty rouge on her lips."

That's her parents' blood by the way.

She was that kind of psycho who didn’t have friend when she was a child and went crazily delusional as she grew up because she was so lonely. I actually like the idea of how Levana became a twisted lunatic and so evil because of mental illness, it makes sense since her family was troubled too. I kind of liked her at first, but as the story goes on she looked more hopeless and disgusting. She had been given many chances to spare herself, to save herself from herself but in the end her pride won so her pitiful life cycle didn’t end. In the end she put herself so low to manipulate people and gain power. She could have better life if she wasn’t that delusional. I can relate her lonely and dark childhood days, but understanding her lonely childhood doesn’t mean that manipulating people is right. Reading the whole story made me shudder in fear. Moral story: please don’t make people feel lonely and bullied them their whole life or they will turn into psychopath.

This book is so well written, hands down to Marissa Meyer. Her descriptions and chosen words are on point. After reading the book… I hate and fear Levana to the core of my cells. Not because she was the evil queen, but because of her life decisions that made her so evil. I love how Meyer made this book so creepy, dark, and chilling. So much different than the main series yet it completes the background story as well. We got to see Channary, little Princess Selene, little Princess Winter, and little Jacin Clay.

This book is too short for me, I read it in one seating. I love Meyer’s writing style here but I don’t want to stay around Levana any longer, it’s so uncomfortable and not fun at all. It’s like the story burns you slowly LOL. You know how painful memory burns you more than happy memory? That's the feeling.

You can read the main series without reading Fairest as this is just a side story. But if you want to understand the whole story even more and you have so many questions about how the disaster begin and the relation of Cinder's past, you have to read this book! But this book has mild disturbing scenes and the creepiness of Levana’s mind is beyond kids’ level though so maybe kids under 15 should stay away.

Still can’t believe that this story came from a writer who made Cress’ innocent character and Thorne’s goofy character but nevertheless this is a very good story. Full marks for Fairest!