My Reaction in a Nutshell: 
 A crowded cast makes a book more action packed, intense, sad, and (more importantly) good. 
 The Long version: 
 Hands down this is the best book of the series so far. Whereas Cinder and Scarlet were merely just pleasurable reads, Cress blew the two previous books out of the water. Although, if I'm being honest, Cress is my least favorite character of the series thus far. However, she was held captive in a satellite for 7 years, so her social awkwardness and whininess isn't entirely her fault. 
 There are a lot of characters in this book and a lot of various plots occurring at the same time. And yet, Meyer is able to keep the book organized and give appropriate attention to each subplot and main character. In this book, readers get to see a variety of points of view from characters including Cress, Cinder, Thorne, Scarlet, Kai, Dr. Erland, Iko, Queen Levana, and Sybil. 
 In this book, there were plot twists that actually surprised me. Granted, I still predicted a lot of the twists, but Meyer managed to shock me this time. This book also manages to be the darkest of the three books. You may ask yourself, "How can it get any darker than wolf-men tearing people apart in Scarlet?" Well, I'll refrain from spoilers, but let's just say Queen Levana is still an evil bitch. 
 This book definitely had a bit more action that the previous two and I would say that it strayed the furthest from its original fairytale (called Rapunzel), but in doing so, it helped The Lunar Chronicles take its shortest detour from the series main plot. Let me just say that I loved Thorne's banter in this book. He had me laughing so hard that my sides were hurting at times. 
 I also enjoyed the hints about Winter at the end of Cress and am excited to read more about her in the book titled (you guessed it) Winter. 
 [technical rating: 4.5/5] 
 ***TRIGGER WARNINGS: mind control, human trafficking, forced suicide, forced servitude, kidnapping, torture, death, murder