Genre: Horror, Mystery, Romance
Key Stage: Year 8+
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Heartless by Marissa Meyer (2016)
Plot: Heartless is a book based on one of Lewis Carroll’s character from Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts. In this tale we follow Catherine when she is young and falls in love with the King’s new joker however, their story cannot be so simple. Catherine, the daughter of the Marquess and Marchioness, faces challenges as her dream of running a bakery gets further away from her, and the one she loves has secrets that she can never know of. This is journey to becoming heartless.
Positives: I enjoyed the Queen of Hearts as a young woman with one straight forward goal in life and a preference for marrying for love, instead of status, which as a daughter of a Marquess, is not easy. I admired her character and thought the progression from a lovely girl to a merciless queen was very heartbreaking but made sense. I thought this was such an imaginative villain backstory and to be honest, i feel like I’d love anything that is inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Seeing Catherine at the start and knowing how she would end up just made me even more curious to get to the ending which was tragic. The romance, setting, characters and plot were all incredibly written.
Negatives: In my opinion, the whole book was intriguing and I could not put it down however, some people may disagree and feel it was slow at the beginning, when the characters and world were introduced. Even though I loved this book, I agree if readers were frustrated at times, because our protagonist could not just have a happy ending and it is easy to blame certain characters for their downfall
Reviewer: Rose, Year 9