Image and blurb from Goodreads
Title: Heartless
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publication date: November 8th, 2016
Category/Genre: Young Adult Fantasy/Retelling
Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland and a favorite of the unmarried King, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, she wants to open a shop and create delectable pastries. But for her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for a woman who could be a queen.
At a royal ball where Cath is expected to receive the King’s marriage proposal, she meets handsome and mysterious Jest. For the first time, she feels the pull of true attraction. At the risk of offending the King and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into a secret courtship.
Cath is determined to choose her own destiny. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans.
Buy Links: Amazon
I would
- Befriend: Catherine
- Go out on a date & kiss: Jest
- Take to a desert island and leave behind: Everyone else, except Hatta
- Travel to Vegas and let Elvis Presley marry us: Jest
4.5 “Give me
my heart back, will you?” Stars
So, yeah, this review is going to be spoiler-y, because
I’m pretty mad and in love with this book, and I can’t not talk about all the
reasons that made me both.
Here comes the warning:
To be completely honest, I didn’t expect the amount of
emotional involvement that came with reading this book. One, I don’t usually
like anything Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland. The story has never really spoken to me. Two, my first
experience with a Marissa Meyer’s book wasn’t all that exciting. I didn’t hate
Cinder, but I didn’t exactly love it, either.
Well, let’s just say Heartless changed everything.
This book gave me so many feels I can’t even put them
all into words. I’ll probably forget dozens of things while writing this
review, but I want to focus on the characters and how they made me feel.
I should say that, aside from Hatter and Jest, I both
hated and loved every other character. Those two I only loved—no room for
hating them since they were perfect.
Let’s start with Catherine, the lady who lessened my
dislike for Wonderland considerably. I spent 95% of this book loving Catherine
and everything she stood for, then 5% trying not to hate her for some shit or
other she did or how she was treating people because everything was justified
and I wanted to hug her. So, yeah… Catherine played with my feelings, and she
did it like a pro.
The Catherine that we were introduced to in the
beginning of the book was someone I could see myself being friends with. She
was a young girl with a dream: opening the best bakery in Hearts with her maid
and best friend, Mary Anne. Her rich parents wanted another life for her; they
wanted her to marry the King and become the Queen of Hearts, but Catherine
wanted none of that. I loved the message here: you don’t need to have the most
powerful position/job in the world in order to be happy. Not wanting to be
super rich/famous/powerful doesn’t mean you don’t have ambitions. Catherine had
dreams she wanted to reach, she was willing to work hard to make them true, and
that didn’t make her less than all the other girls dreaming of being Queen.
But Catherine’s dream was almost an impossible one. Her
family didn’t want to hear about their only daughter opening a business. The
King became infantuated with her and wanted to marry her. She had no money or
support to fulfill her dream. And most dangerous of all, Catherine was losing
her heart to another man.
Enter Jest, the joker, owner of my heart, book crush
and…. *cries* Marissa Meyer pulled a Leigh Bardugo on me here, and though I
should’ve seen it coming since this was the story of the Queen of Hearts and I’d
get no happy ending, I still wished for one. It still made me mad and
devastasted to see what she did to Jest. I still hated Marissa Meyer, Mary
Anne, Catherine and everyone involved.
Look, you can’t create a perfect love interest like
Jest (funny, compassionate, romantic, a guy who makes the impossible possible)
and then just break my heart like that. It’s not fair and it honestly should be
prohibited.
It was silly of me to expect a different outcome—and if
you’re just as silly, then let me warn you that you’ll get your heart broken,
so readjust your exepctations immediately, please—but I still hoped that this
would be the kind of retelling that would throw everything out the window and
just do what it pleased. It’d give me the happy ending Catherine and Jest
deserved. My heart deserved.
Nope. My heart got ripped out of my chest and stomped
on, instead.
Which means, yes, we get to see how the Queen of Hearts
became the Queen of Hearts. And, this makes me horrible, but I totally get it.
Sure, Catherine didn’t do a fine job taking responsibility for the actions that
led to the tragedy, but she was grieving and desperate for revenge, so I get
why she’d be irrational and turn on everyone else instead of looking at herself
as the guilty one. Besides, what was she to do then? Was her decision wrong?
Yes. But not going back would’ve been wrong, too. That’s when I hate Marissa
Meyer a little more, because she made it impossible to choose.
Plus, everyone else kind of deserved the way Catherine
acted. Not Hatter. Hatter was phenomenal—and that plot twist? Damn it. My heart
broke all over again.
But the rest of the people in Catherine’s heart
deserved the Queen’s wrath. I know Mary Anne was only trying to help, but I
always resent those kind of people—the ones who get themselves in trouble
because they do something silly or stupid and then need to be saved. Plus, Mary
Anne had already broken Cath’s trust. Sure I understood her concern, but Mary
Anne was that typical character that fit that saying about paths paved with
good intentions. I still loved how smart Mary Anne was, but like Catherine, I
had a hard time forgiving her in the end.
Same goes for Catherine’s parents. Sure they were
trying to do what they thought was best for her, but they didn’t bother to ask
or take her opinion into consideration, so I can’t bother to really feel sorry
for them.
Like I said before, this book was all about how these
characters made me feel. The world building was interesting with all the spins
on recognazible characters and little or big hints of things we’ve seen on the
many stories inspired in Alice in
Wonderland, but that wasn’t what made this book special to me. In fact,
this book was special despite being inspired in a tale that normally doesn’t
interest me at all. It was all about characters and building relationships just
to tear them apart. It was all about building a character and showing us how
life can transform someone so completely. How an impossible decision can lead
to a life-changing tragedy. How a villain can also be a heroine.
It was also all about taking my heart and breaking it.
Marissa Meyer was heartless here, and I both love and hate her for it.
*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.
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