I'm not sure why I found Cress so laborious. I loved Cinder!! I literally ignored the tv and my boyfriend so that I could finish that freaking book. Scarlett wasn't as intriguing to me, but I attributed that to it being my first audio book, but then I get to this one, in e-book form, and it's just not enough to keep my attention. Halfway through, it felt like I was reading for school, even among the cyborgs and mind-altering aliens. I dunno. I really wanted to love it but I just wasn't feeling it, and I didn't ship anyone, really... it may be the simplicity of the writing because the plot lines were there, and I wasn't always sure what was going to happen, although it was easy to guess the general ideas. IDK!!!!! So, three stars from me. Underwhelming, unfortunately. 
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 One day later: I was pondering this on my way into work this morning and I kind of feel like Cress, as a character, didn't have much going for her? Like she was a super cool hacker, but she was soooooo good at it that nothing was a problem for her. Obviously she was socially inept, but that's such an overdone trope that I was just rolling my eyes at it. And then it felt like she wasn't the main character of the book named after her. I just wanted to know what Cinder was up to the entire time, and since their story lines diverged for most of the book, I just stopped caring as much until Cinder came back. Hm. I also felt like the fairy tale part of Cress was over far too soon - by the second half of the book, it was back to being all about Cinder and definitely not about Rapunzel/Cress, and I think that's what I loved about Cinder so much.