by Marissa Meyer
Read by: Rebecca Soler
ages: 12+
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Cinder is a cyborg — part human, part machine — which puts her at the fringe of the New Beijing society. She’s just a mechanic, even if she is a good one, and just barely tolerated by her stepmother and stepsisters. (Well, one of her stepsisters, Peony, is her friend. The other, not so much.)

Then, once day the crown prince Kaito shows up at her booth, dragging an android that needs to be fixed. And Cinder’s world — for better and for worse — is changed forever.

I should get this out of the way for all of you who haven’t read it: yes, this is a first in the series. I somehow missed this fact, and so by the end of the book, when it was clear that it wasn’t going to be wrapped up in one story, I was pretty frustrated. I think, if I had known this would go on longer, I would have been less impatient with the story.

Because, really: it took too long to tell. I know it didn’t help that I figured out the twist a little ways into Book 2, but really: this story could have been told sufficiently in one book; making it a series just felt forced to me.

That said, there were elements I did like: I liked Cinder’s android friend, Iko, and Cinder’s relationship with her. I liked Cinder, and the way her cyborg elements helped, enhancing her as a character. I liked the doctor (I don’t remember his name; since I listened to it.), and his role in the story. I liked the world that Meyer built: part dystopian, part fairy tale. I did like the way she was morphing the Cinderella story into something else: the basic elements were still there, but melded quite well with the world that Meyer created. I loved the reader: she was brilliant, and her reading made the story pop.

I guess, in the end, the positives of the book outweigh my frustration at the story taking too long to tell.