Official rating 3.75* 
 First of all, I must say I really enjoy fairy tale retellings and this happened to be a very original version of a retelling of Cinderella. The science fiction aspects of this story are what made it such a unique twist to the original storyline that all Disney movie lovers know and love. And the fact that Cinderella was always one of least favorite Disney princesses/movies (due to Cinderella's obvious lack of a personality), it was nice to see such a strong kick-ass personality coming from Cinder. 
 Even though I loved the storyline of this retold version of Cinderella, there were still a few things that either left me feeling like something was missing or just flat out had me thinking "what?" 
 The "what?" moments included things like, "What the heck is up with this weird font?" Something about the font kept me from getting into the story right away. I watched some non-spoilery review before reading this and the person I watched mentioned the font... that was all I could think of as I read through the first couple chapters. There were a few other times when reading through this story that I found some grammatical errors that also left me thinking "What the..." Sorry editors, but those errors leave me reading sentences a few times trying to figure out why they sound so strange... and end up taking away from the story for me. There were a few other times that sentence structures left me feeling the same way. I had to read them a few times because something about them didn't flow very well. I think that is just Marissa Meyer's writing style though and not necessarily anything to do with her editors. 
 Other moments had me feeling like something was missing. For example, What does T.E. stand for? As in, 9 August 196 T.E. I felt like that was something that should have been addressed (or hopefully will be addressed in the future books). There were a few other times like that I felt myself wondering how something had happened which left things feeling a little incomplete. Another example: What caused this WW4 and what was the complete outcome? We hear about certain aspects of this "new world" that was created in the wake of WW4, but I feel like I needed more details explaining how things came to be the way they were. I like hearing about politics and intrigue and I wanted a bit more depth to that aspect of the story. 
 Now on to the characters; I'm not sure if it was because of Marissa Meyer's writing style (see comments in paragraph 3) or if it was just me, but I didn't feel all that connected to the characters. I can usually muster up some feelings of sympathy (and sometimes if the writing is really good, empathy) for characters, but I just didn't feel all that invested in most of the characters. I felt like parts of characters' personalities have been rushed and that I need more to feel more for them. Cinder is clearly our main character, but I felt like even though she was a "flawed" character, I couldn't really relate to her flaws (because the only ones mentioned were mostly cosmetic in nature and not personality driven). There were certain characters that I felt had no redeeming qualities (Queen Levana and Adri), but you obviously need a strong villain who shows no empathy or sympathy for those around them in fairy tales. A lot of the relationships between characters felt a bit forced and not entirely natural - hopefully this is fixed within the next couple books as well. I want to read books that have personal growth and I don't really feel like any of the characters had much if any personal growth. 
 But all in all, even though the plot was quite predictable, this was a very cute story that I will be continuing to read because once I got into it (it took quite a few chapters, but got into it) the pages went by very quickly and I was pleased to see that I had been able to read this book within about a day.