I think I liked this book more than the first one because I like Scarlet and Wolf as leading characters. Kai and Cinder had character development in their book but as the first in any series much of the book was devoted to world building. I liked this couple better and was interested to see what Meyer would do with the story of little red riding hood. While the story is not one that is often chosen for retellings I enjoyed it. While I will say the storyline of wolves and Alphas, Betas and Omegas really isn’t for me. While it doesn’t come up often it comes up enough that it wasn’t my favorite part of the book. Kai and Cinder have some mentions in this book with

  Cinder receiving more development as she meets Throne (another character) and they break out of prison together.

Iko as always is comic relief and I enjoyed her character even more in this book.

What a great second book! We're given new characters that are just as vibrant as book one, and the plot really picks up. The beginning can be a little frustrating/disorienting as you get used to who is who, but it is quickly intriguing. It's obvious that the plot was clearly laid out from the inception of these books because of its intricacies. Some people may be frustrated with the lack of Kai in this one, and it is more gory than book one. Sometimes the new characters can be a bit toxic, but it also makes them interesting.

I do not factor audiobook narrators' performances into in my overall star rating of a book, but I would give Rebecca Soler a 4.5/5. She did better with this one than the last, with a bit more variance in her emotion, although it still drones or falls flat in parts. Her accents were quite good, actually allowing me to know who was talking when. However, I started to wonder why Scarlet has a French accent (typically, though sometimes Soler forgets to use it) but Kai, for instance, has an American one even though he lives in New Beijing.