Cinder by Marissa Meyer

I know that I'm not the only reader out there with a TBR stack nearly as tall as I am (or maybe even taller). Really, are you even a book lover if you don't have dozens of books on standby just waiting to be read? Last year, I received The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer in a book gift exchange (my favorite kind!) and I am finally getting started with them. I don't read a lot of YA anymore, but I thought it would be a nice, easy read during such a busy time of year.

Beginning with Cinder, I jumped into this futuristic, fantastical reimagining of classic fairytales. Cinder, a talented machinic, is a cyborg and cyborgs are treated with utter contempt from all the "real" humans in society, from the other vendors in the market to her adoptive "family". She has no memory of her life before it was saved through the surgery that turned her into a cyborg, but since then she has lived with a horrible step-mother and two step-sisters, one awful and one very sweet and kind. When Cinder is called upon to repair the Prince's android, her life takes a very unexpected turn. She finds herself in the middle of an intergalactic conflict and fighting a deadly plague all at the same time.

This book was fun and quick to read. I found myself trying to guess who each character was meant to represent from the original story, but it wasn't always obvious- much to the credit of Meyer. The storyline is unexpected enough to keep it interesting. I was especially pleased to learn that the series covers several fairytales and the storyline continues throughout the series rather than wrapping up each tale neatly at the end of its book. I've been in a bit of a book funk lately and this light, fun series may be just the thing to end the year and begin a new one.