Fairest || Book Review

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

1. Can we just pause and admire the cover? I still cant get over how pretty and haunted it looks.

2. My copy was signed by Marissa Meyer, meant she touched it. Yep I am a total Fangirl.

Love is a conquest. Love is war. 

From the title and the cover, you might think it's about Snow White but it isn't. It is about the evil queen. Not many books allow us to see the evil queen's perspective. Through this book, I kindda question myself, is the evil queen really that evil? All she was, to me, was selfish. She was selfish for love, for beauty, and for power. 

The evil queen, Levana, is the second child. Her parents died when she is young and her elder sister takes over the crown. Her elder sister, Channary, treats Levana horribly.  She makes Levana feel so desperate and help less, feel so worthless and ugly. But what can Levana do? She is her sister and she is the queen.

Levana fells in love with a guard, Evret. But Evret has a wife who was already pregnant. Now, if I stop here you would think that Levana kills the wife to get what she wants but that's not the case. Levana is not evil yet. Evert's wife dies when she was giving birth to a little girl. Evret names her Winter. Levana saw this as an opportunity for her so she manipulates Evret with her powers to marry her. (If you can't remember, Lunar have supernatural powers, like what you see with vampires in Twilight, and those who don't have powers are called shells) 

When Channary becames pregnant as well, Levana knows that she lost her place in the royal throne. Channary catches a bad disease and dies the following week. Levana is left to take care of two children that wasn't even hers, Winter and Channary's daughter, Selene. She knows that when Selene grows older, Selene will take over the throne but until then, Levana was the queen and she would do everything in her power to make a mark in her reign. 

There was a part on the book that was really sad and surprising. It was when Levanana tells her story of why she always uses charms to disguise her real look. She was burnt when she was young by Channary. Channary, like all Lunar, has powers too and she manipulated Levana to enter into big flame of fire. Standing there, not moving, crying for help but could not escape the manipulation Channary place in her head, Levana was severally burnt. Since then, she never shows anyone her real look, her scars, her burnt skin and her disfigured face. 

The ending was a smooth connection to the book Cinder. In the end, Levana takes over the throne and is obsess with the idea of conquering earth but in order to do so, she needs alliance, not with other kingdoms, but with Earth itself and she has the perfect plan to do so. To achieve it,  it would eventually break her and form the Evil Queen.

hugs and kisses