Fairest : The Lunar Chronicles Levana's Story

It's taken me almost a decade to finish The Lunar Chronicles, mainly because of this book. I had believed this to be a bridging novella between Cress and Winter, and I honestly did not care about Levana enough to read this when I first read books one through three. However, upon actually forcing myself to read this just now, I have discovered that it is a prequel and not required reading, to which I say: why did nobody tell me this before?? I could've saved like an hour of my time and finished this series years ago. Man.