Heartless by Marissa Meyer

Pages: 464
Publish date: 8th November 2016
Publisher: Pan Australia
ISBN: 1925479471
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU 

Heartless:

I received an arc of Heartless by Marissa Meyer from Pan Macmillan Australia in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.

When I heard that Marissa Meyer was writing an Alice in Wonderland retelling, I was excited. I had high hopes for Heartless because The Lunar Chronicles are one of my favourite science fiction/retelling series. However, my expectations were not exceeded. At all.

Heartless follows protagonist Catherine, who loves baking and making confectionaries. But, when she catches the eye of the King of Hearts – she wants out. She will do anything, but marry him including falling in love with his court jester. When everything starts to fall on top on Catherine, she must choose between following her heart or doing what is ‘right’.

To say that I am disappointed with Heartless would be an understatement. It took me nearly a month to read through it and that’s very rare for me – I could never get into it. Most of the time I was bored and by the end of the book, I was rushing to finish the book. I didn’t want to DNF it hoping that it would get better, that something will spark in the book for me.

The whole book I didn’t connect with Catherine at all. I found her selfish and even childish at time. Half of the book was her complaining about her life and what she has to do. However, I understand that she wanted to be her own person and wanted to own her bakery. And I commend her on that but, she acted like a three-year-old when she didn’t get her way. Nevertheless, I did like when she stood up for herself.

I did really like the cooking parts of Heartless. I love cooking myself, so being able to see this in a book was fun and exciting. The food was described remarkably well and left me hungry.

After finishing Heartless I am still not sure why she doesn’t like the King of Hearts. Yes, he is a little strange and not very ‘manly,’ but there aren’t reasons why she despises him. From the get go, she has no intention of marrying him, and acts like him is a disease. If Heartless was contemporary, I might not have this problem. However, it’s set up like the 1800’s when people married up, so it was hard to get through.  

I also wasn’t a massive fan of the romance in Heartless. It was unquestionably instalove. They see each other once and she already wants to be with him. In saying that I really enjoyed Jest as a character. He was charismatic, magical and knew the right things to say. I enjoyed getting to know him.  

One of the things that I loved about the Lunar Chronicles was the friendships – they were exceptional. However, in Heartless that was not the case. Obliviously this a different story, but friendships are so important in books for me. And even though there was somewhat some, it was enough. There was no spark.

I did, however, love the world of Heartless. It was everything that you could imagine an Alice in Wonderland retelling would be. I loved all the hints to the original world. The characters, who they would become, sayings and everything in between. There were parts that put a smile on my face. I loved that it was effortlessly intertwined with one another.   

Nevertheless, I felt that Heartless was too long. With over 450 pages, I was bored at times. There were some good scenes here and there, but I felt that everything else was filler. Yet, I really enjoying the last 100 pages or so.

The ending of Heartless was intense. I didn’t know what was going to happen next or who was going to die. Catherine went from being Lady Pinkerton to being the Queen of Hearts.

Overall, I liked Heartless. Although, my expectations were not achieved. Heartless is about love, betrayal and finding out who you are. Heartless is about believing in yourself and becoming who you are destined to be.

Have you read Heartless? What did you think of it? Are you going to read it? Have you read Marissa Meyer’s other books? Let’s Chat!