Cinder by Marissa Meyer

       I just finished Cinder a couple of weeks ago and let me tell you, it was amazing! I don't know why it took me this long to decide to give this series a chance because so far I am in love. I loved the twist on the Cinderella story, I mean a cyborg Cinderella? Who wouldn't enjoy that. I loved that this book added a lot of other elements to the story as well so it wasn't as predictable as you would think. There were so many other things going on; a plague that decimated the population, countries changed up, Lunar people, cyborgs and an awesome twist.
       The characters were all great and brought their own thing to the story. Cinder was an excellent character especially since she didn't act like the Disney Cinderella we all know. She is very independent and even though she is stuck with a crappy step mom she doesn't let it bring her down too much. She also doesn't have two mean step sisters, there are still two step sisters but she is friends with one of them. I'm not going to get into too much about her sister because I don't want to spoil anything. She knows that she can't stay with her forever and comes up with a plan to escape. When she meets her prince or Emperor to be she isn't shy but doesn't completely let her guard down with him either since she is a cyborg and to most people that is something frowned upon.
Kai is this story's Prince Charming and his character is pretty complex. His dad has the plague that was brought on by the Lunars and the Queen of the Lunars wants to marry him which he is totally against. He comes across Cinder because he needs someone to fix his android and she is the best mechanic around. I loved the meetings between Kai and Cinder. They flirted but not in a cheesy way and the chemistry between the two was pretty good. Levana is the perfect evil queen and just the whole introduction to the Lunar people is really awesome!
       The setting was great as well. There was a good amount of detail to the story, you get really vivid images of the palace, the market, the hospital and many of the other places. There wasn't way too much detail either so we were bogged down in it which is great especially for the first in a series!

Overall I really enjoyed the story and can't wait to read the next one. I give this book a 4.7 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to anyone who wants a good sci-fi/dystopian type of story.