So, going into this book, I had pretty low expectations. I didn't really love the first two books - they were entertaining and all, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't feel all that invested. Maybe it just wasn't the right time for me to read them. Cress blew me away. 
 The character development of multiple characters was great and I just gotta say, the Thorne/Cress relationship had me cracking up. Some of the baloney that Thorne would say had me smiling all by myself and there were times that I even laughed aloud (and let's get real, I don't do that for books very often). My heart broke for Wolf in this book and I was surprised that Marissa Meyer was not afraid to HURT her characters. I think it felt so much more real because of that. So often in YA books, authors don't want to hurt the stars of their story except for minor scrapes, bruises, and bumps. Not in the case of this book though! Characters are shot, chopped up, knocked out, and tortured which makes the connections feel all the more real. 
 I feel that Marissa Meyer's writing style became a little stronger in this book as well. As I've been reading this series, Cinder is probably my least favorite. And honestly, it's probably because of the writing style. Something about her sentence structure and style in that first book just weren't doing it for me. I know a lot of people have said that Scarlet is their least favorite of the series, but I thought writing style-wise it was stronger than the first. Plus, who doesn't love a brooding bad-boy (enter in Wolf). 
 The only thing that I didn't like as much was that the plot twists were insanely easy to see coming. This story definitely was more complex than the first two because it is weaving together at least 6 characters' stories (and these characters are not with each other for the majority of the story) so you have to make sure to pay attention to what people are doing and which characters you are with at any given part of the story. But even so... with the complexity of the story, I was still able to see the plot twists coming so felt like I knew what was going to happen to just about every character by the end of this story and saw every "reveal" where I felt like Marissa Meyer wanted people to stop in surprise and awe. Nope, sorry. Not surprised. Saw those coming Marissa. 
 Even with those subtle as a bomb foreshadowing moments, I still immensely enjoyed this book. I read 40% of it one day and then the rest the next day and it was the frenzied kind of reading a person loves because you just have to find out what is going to happen next! The frenzied kind of reading that when it happens for me, I tend to skip forward in the sentences and paragraphs because nothing bad better happen to my character loves. Not a favorite book overall, but still 5 star worthy in comparison to rest of the series.