I loved the Lunar Chronicles and couldn't wait to get my hands on Meyer's take on Alice in Wonderland and it didn't disappoint!

I really enjoyed this book, the world was super colourful as were at lot of the characters, it was fun to see how Meyer imagined the back story to this already well known character

The retelling Queen is at it again with this stunning story of Wonderland's infamous Queen of Hearts. This book was so well written and the fact that you know how it's going to end makes it so much more exciting and even more tragic. The characters were breath of fresh air and the story was truly beautiful!

Full Book Talk: http://forever-fictional.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/heartless-marissa-meyer-book-talk.html

I don't think i really connected much to this novel. I liked the MC at the start but then she focused too much on her romance with the Joker and all her choices seemed irrational and rushed. 

I understand that this is meant to be a backstory for the Red Queen but i just think the book focused too much on the romance which was the annoying instant love and Cath wanting to be a baker, yet we knew she wouldn't become one. I felt the second half of the novel where the character transformation happened was too short and slightly rushed. 

Catherine herself was likable however I just felt she never truly stood up for herself until the end when it was clouded by 'vengeance'. I felt she let others make her choices for her but yet it's conflicting because at other times she didn't. 

In terms of the romance, I thought it was cute at the start but it got really uninteresting and boring and consumed the entire novel/plot. I felt the sub plots were overshadowed a lot which was sad because the sub plots were interesting. 

I felt in terms of world building and creating this magical atmosphere the novel was a miss because I didn't really find it magical or a bit crazy just tame and a bit boring. The party with the Hatter was one of my favourite scenes and I feel if the rest of the novel had the same atmosphere as that scene I would have liked the book. 

In terms of the transformation into the Red Queen I actually liked it even though I knew it was very rash/harsh but it was the moment that Cath took control.

I think I had very high expectations and when they weren't met I felt really disappointing and uninterested in the novel. 

2/5

Thank you for sending me a copy of this for review - and sorry for taking so long to send in my thoughts. I found Heartless quite difficult to get into. It was slow to start and I therefore found it quite hard to get through the book. I love the idea of having a backstory to the Red Queen, as Wonderland is one of my favourite fantasy worlds. I thought it was fascinating to see how she became the woman she was, and the world didn't let me down. Unfortunately for me, however, the book was just a little long and a little slow, and it detracted from my experience. I'm still glad to have read it though, and will pick up more Meyer books in future!

Heartless was nothing like what I was expecting. Marissa Meyer is a master at creating characters who worm their way into your heart and don't let go. This book was very character driven, which I was a pleasant surprise. Having the book being character driven and on the slower side gave the reader a lot of time to understand the future Queen of Hearts, Catherine.The romance was well structured and I enjoyed the slower pacing.

3 stars

It took me the longest time to get into this book. For the first 40% I was fighting a constant battle with myself as to whether I should simply mark this book as a DNF and move on. However, I really enjoy Meyer’s work, I mean, Cinder is a great piece of fiction and I love how she cleverly twists fairytales to her needs. So, I soldiered on, and, at about 40%, I began to get a feeling, the sort of feeling I get in my chest when I’m really starting to get invested in something.

It was dark and mysterious and a little mind bending in places, and I began to think, this is why I wanted to read this book. We have an abrasive protagonist, a mysterious court jester, a cast of characters every bit as strange as the Wonderland of our childhoods, and the omnipresent threat of the Jabberwock. A feeble Monarch, a kingdom of the weird and wonderfully naïve, and a Hatter who managed to at once be eccentric and dangerous in all the best ways. It really does raise the question, how is it possible that a book I was coming to love ended up a three star read?

There were some really cool moments, I actually devoured the middle half of the book. Anything Jest or Hatta related automatically caught my attention and, without ruining the plot for anyone, I will say that the backstory written for them was really interesting. I do feel, however, that not enough was done with it, and there’s nothing more infuriating than watching the characters with the coolest designs just not getting used to their full effect. The book was deliciously dark, and with all its cake laden pages was delicious in many other ways as well. There was blood and pain and the heart breaking sensation of characters having to settle for less. It had all the ingredients of a five star book, but somehow in the baking did not rise to its potential majesty.

The beginning is slow and sometimes irritatingly twee. It was only once we reached further into the book that it developed a bit of grit, a bit of the sinister energy of a villain origin story. This is the world of the Looking Glass, yes, it should be strange, iridescent, vivid, but it should also be unsettling, for in that you find the true heart of Wonderland. I do feel the middle half of the book really captured the off kilter roots of Carroll’s books, it was just a shame that it ended in the way it did.

But this is a villain origin story you say. You knew when you started this read it was never going to have a happy end? Yes, but there’s a big difference between bittersweet and just plain anger inducing.

I don’t think I’ve ever raged over a character’s actions as much as I did those of Cath. She quite literally condemned her companions to death and their worst nightmares. I have no words for how close I was to hurling my kindle across the room at that point. Her decision was so illogical, so utterly infuriating, that I ended up skimming the last couple of pages, no longer invested in character or book at all. Vengeance is a fine plot motivator when it’s given time to brew. A handful of pages at the end of a book just doesn’t do it for me.

I can see why some people adored this book. Everyone and every heart is different. For me personally I felt there was little reward for me in finishing this book. I felt cold and hollow as I turned the final page and was tetchy for many hours afterwards. I think there is importance in the delineation between a good book and an enjoyable book. This was a good read, it was not an enjoyable one.

Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for a copy in return for an honest review.

Marissa Meyer has recently become one of my honoured auto-buy authors. I read Cinder about a year and half ago, not really expecting much, and surprised myself by obsessing and devouring the rest of the Lunar Chronicles Books in record time.

I read Alice in Wonderland ten years ago and the Disney movie was one of my favourites when I was little. So, given that Heartless is an origin story for the Queen of Hearts written by Queen Marissa Meyer, no surprises that this was pretty much the most anticipated read.

Within just the first few chapters, I found myself constantly hungry due to the delicious food descriptions. Makes me wonder if Marissa Meyer is a great dessert chef herself!


“Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”



Cath was a wonderful character, complex and torn with emotions, going from a kind and innocent girl to the harsh queen we know so well.

The Cath/Jest romance could be categorized as instalove, but I do feel under the circumstances it worked. They meshed wonderfully and I was rooting for them from their very first meeting.

All of this is set to the wonderful world of Hearts, a quirky world, and a delight to immerse myself in the weirdness!

While I enjoyed Heartless, I didn’t love it. It was not as magical as the Lunar Chronicles. In Cinder, I was sucked in just by the first few chapters. With Heartless, I didn’t have the desperate need to keep reading. I read it over the course of a few weeks (I read Cinder in pretty much one go).


“How different everything could have been if you had thought to ask me that before.”



However, the last fifty pages were heartbreaking and perfect.

Marissa is a wonderfully witty author. Her style has become more pronounced in Heartless and I cannot wait for her upcoming book, Renegades.

Thank you so much MyKindaBook for sending over a copy!

I am not entirely sure what I expected but I really liked it; I was maybe a little disappointed there wasn't as much madness as you'd expect from Wonderland, but the little references, the back stories, were spot on. In fact, for the most part, it was very much just a love story, with Cath meeting Jest but being unable to do anything about it because her mother was pushing her towards the King.


Cath was a pretty regular girl, an only child, who loved to bake and dreamed to opening up her own shop with best friend Mary Ann. But being the daughter of a marquess has expectations and doing such an unladylike thing like baking isn't one of them. At a ball held by the King, everything changes when her eyes meet Jest's, the new court Joker. I immediately feel for him, let alone Cath! He was charming and utterly adorable, and as he and Cath grow ever closer, I could feel myself wishing for that happy ending they both deserved. But of course, Cath was destined to be the Queen of Hearts, even though the King was a complete buffoon.



Here was my main problem with this: the King was an idiot, sure, but the whole court and limited options for women had a very Victorian feel to it. I get that the original was written then and Meyer was just imitating that style, but still - in a land where animals talk, playing cards are guards and things come out of a Joker's hat, is it really that weird for a girl to just want to bake? Not to mention the total unfairness of expecting Cath to just be happy that the King has picked her, despite knowing next to nothing about her!

Like I said, it was basically a love story with Cath and Jest falling head over heels for each other despite it being completely inappropriate. There was a little drama but it didn't come to a head until the very end, as Cath and the rest of the Land of Hearts were under threat of the Jabberwock. I won't say anything else, lest I spoil it, but let's just say I really enjoyed the overall story, especially the romance, but with not a lot happening other than Cath fretting over disappointing her family, it felt quite long. A must for fans of the original story and for forbidden romances and overall madness.

Marissa Meyer is an author who can definitely engage with her prose. I enjoyed her previous series, The Lunar Chronicles, and was looking forward to reading Heartless. Meyer has proved her skills with retellings, so I was sure this one would be good. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I still agree.

Before she became queen, Catherine was a girl with a dream of opening up her own bakery. Then she learns that the King of Hearts is planning on making her his queen. At a ball that is supposed to be her engagement ball, Catherine flees and meets the mysterious new court jester, who completely ensnares her with his charm. She cannot stop thinking about him and soon the two fall in love. But societal rules, a monstrous threat and a hidden agenda threaten to rip them apart. Catherine is determined to find a way to save her dream, save her newfound love and save her people all at once. But, as it seems, her attempts are futile as her fate has already been decided.

The writing in this book is good. Perhaps not as good as Meyer’s previous works, but still enough to engage the reader. At times it felt a little too forced with the pompous dictionary – like it was trying too hard to fit with the Wonderland narrative, but, in doing so, it overdid it. Still, it definitely had it’s witty moments.

I found the characters a bit flat and hard to relate. Yes, Catherine has a dream. I guess we can all relate to that. But she also kind of felt like a spoilt little brat. Don’t get me wrong, good on her that she did her best to try and open that bakery, but… Well, she’s still a sheltered, privileged girl. And a foolish one at that. As for Jester – he was easily forgettable, and so were the rest of the characters. They were all there to serve the purpose of furthering Catherine’s story rather than be well fleshed out characters with their own purpose. At least that’s how it seemed to me.

The romance is the weakest part of this book, in my opinion, which is a shame because it’s also the most prominent part of this book. There was little to no foundation to lay this supposed love on and it just made this affair all the more dull and unbelievable. I did not find one good reason why I should care whether Cath and Jest got their happy little ever after. Not could I believe for once second that these two really fell in love when we barely get anything to justify that fall. It’s a classic case of insta-love at its finest.

Overall, Heartless has a promising premise with hardly anything to back it up. The title really clues you in on what to expect, because this story really lacks a heart to make it beat. It’s a good take on Wonderland lore, but the dull characters and even duller romance spoil that.

I enjoyed this far more than I expected to, I wasn't a big fan of Cinder but this is creative and very clever in its twists on Alice in Wonderland. The pacing is slow, particularly in the first half, and some of the reasons for the slow pace didn't have a good pay off later (most of the bakery plot). The Hatter being called Hatta, and the March Hare being called Haigher is witty. Charming elements like this will stay with the reader and it is incredibly commercial, I've already handsold about 10! Well done Marissa.

This was such a hard book to rate and I know I'll be completely in the minority on this one, so don't judge me for it. I wanted to love this book soooo much. I've been excited about it coming out since I first heard it was coming out. A retelling? From the villians POV? Alice in Wonderland? And from Marissa Meyer? It should have been perfect, I thought it was just okay, kind of meh.

What I liked:

The writing is gorgeous. Rich and velvety and descriptive. Everything is lush and beautiful - especially the food - I swear I put on weight just reading about those pies. As an Alice fan, I enjoyed how many references and nods to the source material were worked in, especailly some of the smaller things like the mock-turtle or the treacle well. The plot, once it got going, was interesting, but I wanted more of the adventure and mystery.

What I disliked:

The pacing. It felt to me like nothing really happened until more than halfway through the story and then all the excitement and action was packed into the last quarter or so of the book. Despite the meandering, a lot of things still felt really rushed - Cath's personality change, her romance with Jest, her plan for Peter etc. Aside from that, it was just far too long.

The characters. I actually really liked a good few of the background charatcers - the King, Hatta, the treacle-well sisters and Duke Warthog etc - they were all either interesting or likeable. Cath, not so much. She felt dull to me, and spent a lot of time whining or moping. She, along with Jest and their relationship, felt really 2D to me. And on that note, why was everone in love with her? The King, Jest, the knave - and all without any real development or reasoning.

Finally, there were two tropes that I really disliked. 1- The hysterical, hugely jealous gay character in love with our hero. 2 - Cath has only one female friend (not counting the one other friends-who-hate-each-other character) and they have a ridicuolusly ugly falling out too. Why do the women all need to be bitchy enemies here?

If you have read and enjoyed Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, then do consider tracking down this YA prequel to his madcap world. Catherine is a joy. I immediately bonded with her open-hearted approach to life and her interest in baking. Meyer has done an excellent job in depicting her privileged life that, nevertheless, is rather empty when it comes to close, loving relationships to the extent that her closest friend is her maid. This first person narrative is harder to pull off than Meyer makes it look, given that she also has to nail Carroll’s peculiar world.

For me, this is the book’s real strength – as a girl I loved the world Lewis presented and Meyer’s depiction of it is both clever and respectful. The kingdom of Hearts has its own quirky rules, which Meyer presents with minimum fuss or explanation so that we fully accept the idea of playing cards running around the place. Neither has she glossed or ignored any of that quirkiness – I enjoyed the Cheshire cat, whose sudden appearances and perceptive comments are entirely in keeping with Lewis’s world. While the account of the croquet game, complete with hedgehogs and flamingos, is funny and bizarre. This is a large part of the book’s charm – while there is a dark undertow, the amusing Lewis-inspired episodes throughout had me grinning, both at the humour and Meyer’s skill in weaving her own narrative within this complex and very odd world.

The catch with prequels is that you generally know the outcome, apart from some minor details, so there has to be something other than the plotline to keep you reading. The ongoing romance throughout this book was well handled – I cared for the couple and hoped they would prevail. Given I’m not a fan of lurve stories (yawn) the fact that I found myself rooting for this one is a testament to Meyer’s excellent writing. And part of the game in these retellings is recognising key characters that featured in the original classic and seeing what Meyer has done with them. Like the original, there is amongst the surreal oddity a sense of wrongness to this world which on occasions breaks into violence – the Jabberwock attacks are a shock in this mannered world where what you wear and how you wear it is the one of the yardsticks to social success. Meyer’s pacing, where she steadily increases the momentum of the story to that amazing climax, is pitch perfect, providing us with the world we now recognise from Alice’s own visit in Lewis’s classic. As you may have gathered, I loved this one and it comes highly recommended.

While I obtained the arc of Heartless from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.

N/A - did not complete. I only write reviews for books I read in their entirety.

I love Marissa's writing, characterisation and world building! However the plot is not for me 😞

I love Marissa Meyer so much - she could write anything and I would probably love it but this book was definitely something else! I love her retellings - they are perfect!

As a long time fan of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, obviously I was interested in seeing her take on Alice in Wonderland. At the start it was hard to see how anything would connect up with the screeching, angry Queen of Hearts as pictured in the original story. But as I trusted Marissa Meyer as an author and quite liked Cath as a character, I continued to read and watched as poor Cath's life was torn apart.

It was a sad story, but it also had a lot of humour, merriment and obviously acts of the impossible. There were many of the original characters from Alice in Wonderland and we saw the origins of a lot of the other characters as well, including the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat, obviously. It was beautifully woven with the insanity and humour that Wonderland is known for in Meyer's unique style.

Meyer has a very distinct style and as I have liked her other books, I enjoyed reading this style, but I feel like she lacked a lot of the humour that Wonderland is known for. It had bits of whimsy involved in it, but mostly it was quite a serious story based within this world. I respect that this is a choice that Meyer had to make, whether to go with her quite serious style or change to add more humour, so I wouldn't say it's a problem as such, but I think I would have liked more humour really.