Audiobook Review - Fairest

• Title And Author: Fairest by Marissa Meyer
• Publisher: Bolinda Publishing
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: Audiobook
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Borrowed by BorrowBox & Essex Libraries 
• Length: 288 Pages or 5 Hours 33 Minutes

If you backtrack through the Pewter Wolf, you will know I started the Lunar Chronicles and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I enjoyed Cinder and loved Scarlet. And then, I stopped. I didn’t go any further. Now, I did try to read the third book in the series, Cress, but every time I did, I stopped at the halfway point. I kept getting so tense over the characters, I kept having to stop myself and I could never come back. And when Winter, the last book came out, I knew I wouldn’t go back to this series as it was SO LONG (over 800 pages). 

But I have always been curious over the little novella, Fairest. As you know, each book in the Lunar Chronicle is inspired on a fairy tale (Cinder follows Cinderella, Scarlet is Little Red Riding Hood, Cress is Rapunzel and Winter is Snow White) so this novella is about the Evil Queen… And I think we all want to know what makes a villain a villain… 

Before Levana was the ruthless Queen of Luna, she was someone completely different. A young, shy girl who lives in her awful older sister’s shadow, hiding her scars behind her Glamour… But what made this girl become who is in the Lunar Chronicles?

I gobbled this audiobook up over the course of a long weekend. I sunk back into this series without much problem. It felt easy as this was a prequel novella. 

Ok, before I go further, I want to say that I’m not 100% certain I want to call this a novella. Yes, it’s short compared to the other books in the series, but I have read books the same length as Fairest and they weren’t classed as novellas. So, how you class this is up to you. 

Also, I want to say that this novella does deal with trauma (trauma by fire, cruelty, gaslighting, emotional abuse and sexual assault) so treat yourself with care if any of these are triggers for you. The reason I say this is that this novella is explaining Levana’s actions. It doesn’t excuse them. In her mind, Levana is the hero of her story, but as readers, we see that she’s becoming a villain and that her actions, though naive at the start, are manipulative, cruel and downright murderous. 

If you are a fan of the series, this is something you will devour, though it doesn’t really add anything to the series. You could easily skip this and it wouldn’t effect your reading enjoyment. I think this just gives an extra layer to the story. 

Because of this, I am very tempted to either go back and reread Cinder and Scarlet, or try and read Cress and carry on the series. I’m not sure if I will do either of these, but I find myself enjoying this (which is nice as the last Marissa Meyer I read - Heartless - I DNFed around the halfway mark).