I always love when a sequel picks up directly after the previous book ends. I always prefer to jump right back in to a story that ended with a cliffhanger like Cinder did. Something that I found remarkable in this book is the way that Meyer uses Scarlets experiences with the media around her to go over the bare bones review of the previous book for people who hadn't literally just put down Cinder.
I found that the pace of this book took a while longer to get in to. I loved that Cinder had two narrators but stayed consistently within the same story. Scarlet continues the two (sometimes three) narrator style but each story is much less connected at the beginning. But once things started to pull together the book took off. The final hundred pages were gripping and fantastic. Much like Cinder I was thrilled how the familiar story of Red Riding Hood existed and yet was completely skewed by the storytelling. Meyer did another great job.
In terms of writing style, I felt that this book pushed a bit further away from the tropes of teen love in YA fantasy, and I appreciate that. The language is still very simple and, besides the imaginary words related to the fantasy aspects, had a fairly limited vocabulary. But I did not feel that this detracted from the book, I would just like to see YA in general start to work to a more intricate use of language.