Fairest gives an insight to Levana Blackburn’s miserable life and how she came to be the queen of Luna as we read throughout the books. Marissa Meyer did a great job portraying this villain because there wasn’t any justification for her terrible behavior but merely reason. I really tried to sympathize with her, but she truly is a psycho that only yearned for love and acceptance in the most wicked way she could conjure those feelings up. She’s a manipulator and a power-hungry queen that reflects most world leaders today and their endless greed. Overall, this novella allows the readers to give their own judgement towards an iredeemable, powerful, yet badly scarred woman.

I seriously enjoyed this book. It wasn't really what I thought it would be, but not in a bad way. Instead of chapters it just had these separate thoughts and moments, which I liked. And I liked the length of the book and characters. However, I do think the arch of the book could've used more definition. It was good, and hit all these bullet points, but I just felt like it was missing a little something in the end. ANYWAY, still loved it, still love the series and author and can not WAIT until Winter!

Such a good back story

** spoiler alert ** 4/5 stars I love reading about villains' origin stories. It's always been one of my favorite genres, especially when it's well done like this one. Although we get into Levana's cruel past, we don't necessarily feel pity for her. Instead, we get a better understanding of why she does what she does in other books. At times, this book can get extremely hard to read if you are light of heart. Levana quickly changed from being pitiful to slowly becoming the coldhearted, calculating villain we know and hate/love.  We feel a slight pity for her because we learn that she was manipulated, bullied, and tortured by her older sister. We also learn she was the cause of her face becoming disfigured, causing her to be named "the ugly princess of Luna". We see how this greatly affects her throughout that series. She always makes sure the glamour is on and is out of sight of all mirrors. Still, this isn't enough to justify all the things she says and does throughout the book. One of the lines that stuck out to me was, "Levana had not seen the bodies, but she had seen the bedrooms the next morning, and her first thought was that all that blood would make a very pretty rouge on her lips." As the book goes on, we see her sister mysteriously die after being poisoned, making Levana the queen. This only worsened her behavior, solidifying her as we know her in the main series. We still see moments of weakness and humanity, but they are very rare and are followed by horrible actions. Overall, it did a great job of helping us understand her motives without causing us to over-sympathize with her. We see how many more issues this woman has and it actually makes us see her as being worse and crazier than she is in the main series.  This has definitely become a favorite and I would recommend it to anyone reading the Lunar Chronicles. It gives you more information about Lunar society, but you also come out with a better understanding of who Levana is. Reading this isn't really necessary as we get some of this information from the main series.

this got me so pumped for WINTER (like SO PUMPED. like stalking-the-tumblr-tag-and-dying pumped) but i wasn't a huge fan of levana (obviously. she's EVIL.). i did like how there were minor characters in this book that are relevant in the series and it's SO COOL TO SEE THEM. although the story itself isn't all that enjoyable – nothing against the plot or anything; i just don't like levana and this is HER story – i highly recommend reading it to get a better understanding of the characters and arc of the story (◡‿◡✿)

What a sorrowful and tragic backstory of Queen Levana! This book goes in depth about how Queen Levana came to be queen and everything she had to sacrifice to do so!

3.75/5 Rounded Up

Originally rated 5 stars now lower it because I’m older and don’t love it as much :(((

Levana is completely delusional, that's for sure. Love is a conquest. Love is a war. Here's what I think of love. So here I am reading Fairest expecting a tale about Levana's childhood and her becoming queen, being introduced as "Snow White's stepmother" and etc when MEANWHILE FAIREST WAS POSSIBLY ONE OF MOST DISTURBING BOOKS I'VE EVER ENCOUNTERED. (view spoiler)[ There is abuse. There is torture. There is rape. There is manipulation. There are murdERS ON PLURAL. THIS BOOK WAS CARVED ON THE STONE OF EVILNESS, SO APPLAUSES FOR MARISSA MEYER FOR DESIGNING SUCH A BIZARRE AND DISTURBING CHARACTER. (hide spoiler)] That being said, the whole plot centering Levana just wasn't for me, I really wish we could see some others perspectives like Evret and Winter or Garrison and Jacin or other, but the whole point of the book was Levana's arc SO OKAY. I just kept thinking about that quote of Mirror, Mirror said by the prince's valet: "There's "I'm in the same room of a prince" crazy, and then there's good old-fashioned, plain, traditional, psycho crazy." hahaha Also, (view spoiler)[ that scene where even Chanary shipped Cinder with Kai was gold. GREAT ONE. (hide spoiler)] From this day forward, you will be my sun at dawn and my stars at night, and I vow to love and cherish you for all our days.

I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK. OMG. Queen Levana was always this creepy antagonist in all the books. However, from her perspective, you get a glimpse of how crazy she is and how part of that is probably driven by her own insecurity about her appearance. Her love life was not healthy and she was twisted in so many ways. She married a man that would never love her but had no choice but to marry her. I didn't like how she manipulated Evret to be with her. But the part when she confronted him about whether he loved her or not, my heart broke for her. He told her that he was waiting for her to get bored of him and stop playing around with him. Ten years of this fake relationship that she deemed real in her messed up mind. I felt bad for her when Evret asked if she was still waiting for him to fall in love with her because you see her really begin to wallow in self pity and go off on the deep end. In the end no one was happy. His care was from pity and obligation. Her love had come to her through manipulative methods. The ending really showed how everything started and exactly when Levana decided she'd rather be power hungry. She was willing to sacrifice everything she considered dear to get to this point.

Now everything comes together unbelievably well and I am extremely excited for Winter.

A bit slow, but great (maybe even essential) to read before reading the last book of the Lunar Chronicles.

“Love is a conquest! Love is war!”

Marissa Meyer continues to impress me with this novella. It was actually so good and I would be lying if I said that this isn't my favorite novella out of all the novella's I've read. It was so interesting reading about Levana's past and getting to know who she was when she was young/on her teenhood days. My only problem with this would probably be not having the physical copy. I read this on ebook and I just really REALLY need to find a physical copy because it was so good and I need this on my bookshelf. THE LUNAR CHRONICLES IS SUCH A GREAT SERIES AND I LOVE IT SO SOO SOOO MUUUCH. <3 I NEED. WINTER. NOW. !!!!! That is all.

4.5 stars | I'm so glad we got a whole novella dedicated to Levana's backstory. I felt my heart breaking for her so many times during this read. It doesn't excuse what she did, but damn. It explains a lot. She's one of my favourite characters in this series...probably because I kept picturing her as Lana Parrilla for some reasons :p

The best one so far!

This was a rough read, honestly. While it's cool to get more of Luna and the world building there, the protagonist being the villain was kind of rough. At times, you could absolutely relate to the lonely little girl who didn't have the right words, but more often than not it was just real villainy. I'm talking lack of consent all over the place. Gaslighting. Real toxic bullshit. And sure, I knew going in that this was the villain's perspective and how she came to be. As Brooklyn 99 says, "Cool story, still murder." All in all, definitely the weakest book in the series so far as I've read. I would not read this too early, as it spoils the other Lunar Chronicles books to some degree, but I feel like it's easy enough to read once you have at least the first two books under your belt.

Pop Sugar Reading Challenge: - a book published this year #ayearathon Fantasy/SciFi Readathon

Gotta love villain backstories!

This book was all kinds of crazy and strange. This was one of the craziest takes on The Evil Queen/ Snow White that I've ever seen. I only read one other book which was the Disney Series with the black covers. Anyway, If anyone else had written this book, or if this was the series opener, I might have said this series isn't for me and DNFED it. Marissa Meyer has a way of sucking you in, and crafting characters and a story you want to care about. The reason this is five stars despite the strange, and at times odd, plot is because I really enjoyed the characters and I wanted to see where the story was going to go.

levana apologist first human second

Another amazing book my Marissa Meyers. This short story is about the life of Queen Levana. Her childhood, neglectful parents, cruel sister and how Levana rose to be queen of Lunar. I would suggest reading this book at the end of the lunar chronicles. I will have spoilers if you read out of order. Trigger warning: graphic content, child abuse

This book was an interesting look at Levana and how she became who she is today. It was very short though, and now I'm just even more excited for Winter!

This book was a great introduction to the Lunar civilization on the moon and a phenomenal insight to Queen Levana's life, however I don't think we needed a 220 page story to justify that Levana is a major bitch. The rest of the series has done that just fine.