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![Heartless by [Marissa Meyer]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51wq2bQ+zwL._SY346_.jpg)
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From Marissa Meyer, the #1 New York Times–bestselling story of Wonderland's most notorious villain: the Queen of Hearts.
Long before she was the terror of Wonderland, she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love. Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen.
Then Cath meets Jest, the handsome and mysterious court joker. 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 an intense, secret courtship. Cath is determined to define her own destiny and fall in love on her terms. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans.
In Heartless, her first stand-alone teen novel, the New York Times-bestselling author dazzles us with a prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
- Reading age12 - 18 years
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level7 - 12
- Lexile measure780L
- PublisherFeiwel & Friends
- Publication dateNovember 8, 2016
- ISBN-13978-1250044655
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Soler's voice has a storytelling quality that entrances listeners and perfectly matches Meyer's vivid writing." -School Library Journal, starred review
"Fans of ALICE IN WONDERLAND will love the audio version of HEARTLESS, beautifully narrated by Rebecca Soler. ...Soler does a remarkable job of bringing to life the fantasy and magic of Wonderland and drawing listeners into the adventure." -AudioFile Magazine
From School Library Journal
About the Author
Rebecca Soler is a film and voiceover actress who won a 2009 AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of After by Amy Efaw. Her audiobook credits include work by authors such as Judy Blume, James Patterson and Sarah Dessen. Soler has also narrated the popular young adult series The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. Her voice over credits include various video games, like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Red Dead Redemption and television shows such as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She lives in New York City. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
Marissa Meyer est l'auteur des Chroniques Lunaires. Avant cela, elle a été éditrice pendant cinq ans et a écrit de nombreuses fanfictions pour la série Sailor Moon sous le pseudonyme d'Alicia Blade. Elle vit aux États-Unis.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Heartless
By Marissa MeyerFeiwel and Friends
Copyright © 2016 Rampion BooksAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-04465-5
CHAPTER 1
Three luscious lemon tarts glistened up at Catherine. She reached her towel-wrapped hands into the oven, ignoring the heat that enveloped her arms and pressed against her cheeks, and lifted the tray from the hearth. The tarts' sunshine filling quivered, as if glad to be freed from the stone chamber.
Cath held the tray with the same reverence one might reserve for the King's crown. She refused to take her eyes from the tarts as she padded across the kitchen floor until the tray's edge landed on the baker's table with a satisfying thump. The tarts trembled for a moment more before falling still, flawless and gleaming.
Setting the towels aside, she picked through the curled, sugared lemon peels laid out on parchment and arranged them like rose blossoms on the tarts, settling each strip into the still-warm center. The aromas of sweet citrus and buttery, flaky crust curled beneath her nose.
She stepped back to admire her work.
The tarts had taken her all morning. Five hours of weighing the butter and sugar and flour, of mixing and kneading and rolling the dough, of whisking and simmering and straining the egg yolks and lemon juice until they were thick and creamy and the color of buttercups. She had glazed the crust and crimped the edges like a lace doily. She had boiled and candied the delicate strips of lemon peel and ground sugar crystals into a fine powder for garnish. Her fingers itched to dust the tart edges now, but she refrained. They had to cool first, or else the sugar would melt into unattractive puddles on the surface.
These tarts encompassed everything she had learned from the tattered recipe books on the kitchen shelf. There was not a hurried moment nor a careless touch nor a lesser ingredient in those fluted pans. She had been meticulous at every step. She had baked her very heart into them.
Her inspection lingered, her eyes scanning every inch, every roll of the crust, every shining surface.
Finally, she allowed herself a smile.
Before her sat three perfect lemon tarts, and everyone in Hearts — from the dodo birds to the King himself — would have to recognize that she was the best baker in the kingdom. Even her own mother would be forced to admit that it was so.
Her anxiety released, she bounced on her toes and squealed into her clasped hands.
"You are my crowning joy," she proclaimed, spreading her arms wide over the tarts, as if bestowing a knighthood upon them. "Now I bid you to go into the world with your lemony scrumptiousness and bring forth smiles from every mouth you grace with your presence."
"Speaking to the food again, Lady Catherine?"
"Ah-ah, not just any food, Cheshire." She lifted a finger without glancing back. "Might I introduce to you the most wondrous lemon tarts ever to be baked within the great Kingdom of Hearts!"
A striped tail curled around her right shoulder. A furry, whiskered head appeared on her left. Cheshire purred thoughtfully, the sound vibrating down her spine. "Astounding," he said, in that tone he had that always left Cath unsure whether he was mocking her. "But where's the fish?"
Cath kissed the sugar crystals from her fingers and shook her head. "No fish."
"No fish? Whatever is the point?"
"The point is perfection." Her stomach tingled every time she thought of it.
Cheshire vanished from her shoulders and reappeared on the baking table, one clawed paw hovering over the tarts. Cath jumped forward to shoo him back. "Don't you dare! They're for the King's party, you goose."
Cheshire's whiskers twitched. "The King? Again?"
Stool legs screeched against the floor as Cath dragged a seat closer to the table and perched on top of it. "I thought I'd save one for him and the others can be served at the feasting table. It makes His Majesty so happy, you know, when I bake him things. And a happy king —"
"Makes for a happy kingdom." Cheshire yawned without bothering to cover his mouth and, grimacing, Cath held her hands in between him and the tarts to protect from any distasteful tuna breath.
"A happy king also makes for a most excellent testimonial. Imagine if he were to declare me the official tart baker of the kingdom! People will line up for miles to taste them."
"They smell tart."
"They are tarts." Cath turned one of the fluted pans so the blossom of the lemon-peel rose was aligned with the others. She was always mindful of how her treats were displayed. Mary Ann said her pastries were even more beautiful than those made by the royal pastry chefs.
And after tonight, her desserts would not only be known as more beautiful, they would be known as superior in every way. Such praise was exactly what she and Mary Ann needed to launch their bakery. After so many years of planning, she could feel the dream morphing into a reality.
"Are lemons in season this time of year?" asked Cheshire, watching Cath as she swept up the leftover lemon peels and tied them in cheesecloth. The gardeners could use them to keep pests away.
"Not exactly," she said, smiling to herself. Her thoughts stole back to that morning. Pale light filtering through her lace curtains. Waking up to the smell of citrus in the air.
Part of her wanted to keep the memory tucked like a secret against her chest, but Cheshire would find out soon enough. A tree sprouting up in one's bedroom overnight was a difficult secret to keep. Cath was surprised the rumors hadn't yet spread, given Cheshire's knack for gossip-gathering. Perhaps he'd been too busy snoozing all morning. Or, more likely, having his belly rubbed by the maids.
"They're from a dream," she confessed, carrying the tarts to the pie safe where they could finish cooling.
Cheshire sat back on his haunches. "A dream?" His mouth split open into a wide, toothy grin. "Do tell."
"And have half the kingdom knowing about it by nightfall? Absolutely not. I had a dream and then I woke up and there was a lemon tree growing in my bedroom. That is all you need to know."
She slammed the pie safe shut with finality, as much to silence herself as to prevent further questions. The truth was, the dream had been clinging to her skin from the moment she'd woken up, haunting and tantalizing her. She wanted to talk about it, almost as much as she wanted to keep it locked up and all to herself.
It had been a hazy, beautiful dream, and in it there had been a hazy, beautiful boy. He was dressed all in black and standing in an orchard of lemon trees, and she had the distinct sensation that he had something that belonged to her. She didn't know what it was, only that she wanted it back, but every time she took a step toward him he receded farther and farther away.
A shiver slipped down the back of her dress. She could still feel the curiosity that tugged at her chest, the need to chase after him.
But mostly it was his eyes that haunted her. Yellow and shining, sweet and tart. His eyes had been bright like lemons ready to fall from a tree.
She shook away the wispy memories and turned back to Cheshire. "By the time I woke up, a branch from the tree had already pulled one of the bedposts full off. Of course, Mama made the gardeners take it down before it did any more damage, but I was able to sneak away some lemons first."
"I wondered what the hullabaloo was about this morning." Cheshire's tail flicked against the butcher block. "Are you sure the lemons are safe for consumption? If they sprouted from a dream, they could be, you know, that kind of food."
Cath's attention drifted back to the closed pie safe, the tarts hidden behind its wire mesh. "You're worried that the King might become shorter if he eats one?"
Cheshire snorted. "On the contrary, I'm worried that I will turn into a house should I eat one. I've been minding my figure, you know."
Giggling, Cath leaned over the table and scratched him beneath his chin. "You're perfect no matter your size, Cheshire. But the lemons are safe — I bit one before I started baking." Her cheeks puckered at the sour memory.
Cheshire had started to purr, already ignoring her. Cath cupped her chin with her free hand while Cheshire flopped deliriously onto one side and her strokes moved down to his belly. "Besides, if you ever did eat some bad food, I could still find a use for you. I've always wanted a cat-drawn carriage."
Cheshire opened one eye, his pupil slitted and unamused.
"I would dangle balls of yarn and fish bones out in front to keep you moving."
He stopped purring long enough to say, "You are not as cute as you think you are, Lady Pinkerton."
Cath tapped Cheshire once on the nose and pulled away. "You could do your disappearing trick and then everyone would think, My, my, look at the glorious bulbous head pulling that carriage down the street!"
Cheshire was fully glaring at her now. "I am a proud feline, not a beast of labor."
He disappeared with a huff.
"Don't be cross. I'm only teasing." Catherine untied her apron and draped it on a hook on the wall, revealing a perfect apron-shaped silhouette on her dress, outlined in flour and bits of dried dough.
"By-the-bye." His voice drifted back to her. "Your mother is looking for you."
"What for? I've been down here all morning."
"Yes, and now you're going to be late. Unless you're going as a lemon tart yourself, you'd better get on with it."
"Late?" Catherine glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. It was still early afternoon, plenty of time to —
Her pulse skipped as she heard a faint wheezing coming from inside the clock. "Oh! Cuckoo, did you doze off again?" She smacked her palm against the clock's side and the door sprang open, revealing a tiny red bird, fast asleep. "Cuckoo!"
The bird startled awake with a mad flap of his wings. "Oh my, oh heavens," he squawked, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his wings. "What time is it?" "Whatever are you asking me for, you doltish bird?" With a harried groan, Catherine ran from the kitchen, crashing into Mary Ann on the stairwell.
"Cath — Lady Catherine! I was coming to ... the Marchioness is —"
"I know, I know, the ball. I lost track of time."
Mary Ann gave her a fast head-to-toe glance and grabbed her wrist. "Best get you cleaned up before she sees you and calls for both of our heads."
CHAPTER 2Mary Ann checked that the Marchioness wasn't around the corner before ushering Cath into the bedroom and shutting the door.
The other maid, Abigail, was there already, dressed identical to Mary Ann in a demure black dress and white apron, attempting to swat a rocking-horsefly out the open window with a broom. Every time she missed, it would nicker and whip its mane to either side, before flying back up toward the ceiling. "These pests will be the death of me!" Abigail growled to Mary Ann, swiping the sweat from her brow. Then, realizing that Catherine was there too, she dropped into a lopsided curtsy.
Catherine stiffened. "Abigail —!"
Her warning was too late. A pair of tiny rockers clomped over the back of Abigail's bonnet before the horse darted back up toward the ceiling.
"Why, you obnoxious little pony!" Abigail screeched, swinging her broom.
Cringing, Mary Ann dragged Catherine into the powder room and shut the door. Water had already been drawn in a pitcher on the washing stand. "There isn't time for a bath, but let's not tell your mother that," she said, fiddling with the back of Catherine's muslin dress while Cath dipped a washcloth into the pitcher. She furiously scrubbed the flour from her face. How had she managed to get it behind her ears?
"I thought you were going into town today," she said, letting Mary Ann peel off her dress and chemise.
"I did, but it was fabulously dull. All anyone wanted to talk about was the ball, as if the King doesn't have a party every other day." Taking the washcloth, Mary Ann scrubbed Catherine's arms until her flesh was pink, then spritzed her with rose water to cover up the lingering aroma of pastry dough and oven fires. "There was a lot of talk about a new court joker who will be making his debut tonight. Jack was bragging about how he's going to steal his hat and smash the bells as a sort of initiation."
"That seems very childish."
"I agree. Jack is such a knave." Mary Ann helped Catherine into a new chemise, before pushing her down onto a stool and running a brush through her dark hair. "I did hear one bit of interesting news though. The cobbler is retiring and will be leaving his storefront empty by the end of this month." With a twist, a dish full of pins, and a touch of beeswax, a lovely chignon rested at the nape of Catherine's neck and her face was haloed by a cluster of jovial curls.
"The cobbler? On Main Street?"
"The very one." Mary Ann spun Cath around, her voice dropping to a whisper. "When I heard it, I immediately thought what a fine location it would be. For us."
Cath's eyes widened. "Sweet hearts, you're right. Right next to that toy shop —"
"And just down the hill from that quaint white chapel. Think of all the wedding cakes you'd be making."
"Oh! We could do a series of different-flavored cobblers for our grand opening, in honor of the shoemaker. We'll start with the classics — blueberry cobbler, peach cobbler — but then, imagine the possibilities. A lavender-nectarine cobbler one day, and the next, a banana-butterscotch cobbler, topped with graham cracker crumble and —"
"Stop it!" Mary Ann laughed. "I haven't had supper yet."
"We should go look at it, don't you think? Before word gets out?"
"I thought so too. Maybe tomorrow. But your mother ..."
"I'll tell her we're going shopping for new ribbons. She won't mind." Cath swayed on the balls of her feet. "By the time she finds out about the bakery, we'll be able to show her what a tremendous business opportunity it is and even she won't be able to deny it."
Mary Ann's smile turned tight. "I don't think it's the business opportunity she's bound to disapprove of."
Cath flitted away her concern, although she knew Mary Ann was right. Her mother would never approve of her only daughter, the heir to Rock Turtle Cove, going into the men's world of business, especially with a humble servant like Mary Ann as her partner. Besides, baking was a job fit for servants, her mother would say. And she would loathe the idea that Cath planned on using her own marriage dowry in order to open the business herself.
But she and Mary Ann had been dreaming of it for so long, she sometimes forgot that it wasn't yet reality. Her pastries and desserts were already becoming renowned throughout the kingdom, and the King himself was her grandest fan, which might have been the only reason her mother tolerated her hobby at all.
"Her approval won't matter," Cath said, trying to convince herself as much as Mary Ann. The idea of her mother being angry over this decision, or worse, disowning her, made her stomach curdle. But it wouldn't come to that. She hoped.
She lifted her chin. "We're going forward with or without my parents' approval. We are going to have the best bakery in all of Hearts. Why, even the White Queen will travel here when she hears word of our decadent chocolate tortes and blissfully flaky currant scones."
Mary Ann bunched her lips to one side, doubtful.
"That reminds me," Cath continued. "I have three tarts cooling in the pie safe right now. Could you bring them tonight? Oh, but they still need a dusting of powdered sugar. I left some on the table. Just a teeny, tiny bit." She pinched her fingers in example.
"Of course I can bring them. What kind of tarts?"
"Lemon."
A teasing smile crept up Mary Ann's face. "From your tree?"
"You heard about it?"
"I saw Mr. Gardiner planting it under your window this morning and had to ask where it came from. All that hacking they had to do to get it unwound from your bedposts, and yet it seemed no worse for wear."
Catherine wrung her hands, not sure why talking about her dream tree made her self-conscious. "Well, yes, that's where I got my lemons, and I'm certain these tarts are my best yet. By tomorrow morning, all of Hearts will be talking about them and longing to know when they can buy our desserts for themselves."
"Don't be silly, Cath." Mary Ann pulled a corset over Cath's head. "They've been asking that since you made those maple–brown sugar cookies last year."
Cath wrinkled her nose. "Don't remind me. I overcooked them, remember? Too crisp on the edges."
"You're too harsh a critic."
"I want to be the best."
Mary Ann settled her hands on Cath's shoulders. "You are the best. And I've calculated the numbers again — with the expected costs attached to Mr. Caterpillar's shop, monthly expenses, and the cost of ingredients, all measured against our planned daily output and pricing. Adjusted to allow some room for error, I still think we would be profitable in under a year."
Cath clapped her hands over her ears. "You take all the fun out of it with your numbers and mathematics. You know how they make my head spin."
(Continues...)Excerpted from Heartless by Marissa Meyer. Copyright © 2016 Rampion Books. Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00XHJM7R0
- Publisher : Feiwel & Friends (November 8, 2016)
- Publication date : November 8, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 2788 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 464 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #17,094 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Marissa Meyer is a fangirl at heart, with a closet full of costumes, a Harry Potter wand on her desk, and a Tuxedo Mask doll hanging from her rear view mirror. Han and Leia are still her OTP. She may or may not be a cyborg.
Marissa is also the NYT bestselling author of a number of books for teens, including The Lunar Chronicles, the Renegades Trilogy, and Heartless.
Sign up for her newsletter at http://www.marissameyer.com or follow her on social media:
Instagram: @marissameyerauthor
Pinterest: @marissameyerauthor
Facebook: @marissameyerauthor
Twitter: @marissa_meyer
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Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2017
Top reviews from the United States
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Marissa Meyer describes everything so well that I believe that I am in Hearts myself. Or that I just have watched the movie Heartless because it was so vivid in my imagination because she describes everything so well.
You also have all the normal characters of from Alice in Wonderland like the White Rabbit, The mad hatter, the Cheshire cat and the caterpillar. This story doesn't just so how the Queen of Hearts became the way she is but also how the Mad hatter became mad. There are scenes pulled out of Alice in Wonderland but are different to fit this book. Like the croquet with the hedgehogs and the flamingos.
At the end of the story, you feel bad for all the characters even the loopy King of Hearts. Even though I know how it is going to end. That Catherine will become the Queen of Hearts, I find myself hoping and hoping that the ending would end differently. That Catherine will get her happy ending. But this story is all about how Catherine became the Queen of Hearts, and it is not a happy story.
Catherine is a beautiful, talented young woman who aspires to open her own bakery. Unfortunately, she is born in a time where social norms expect woman to marry, procreate, and remain silent. Much to her chagrin, she has caught the eye of the bumbling King of Hearts.
And then, his request. To be his bride. To be his wife. There would be no passion, no romance, no love. But she could picture precisely how he would smile at her, so hapless. So hopeful. Her stomach roiled. Could she ever say yes to that? As she took a sip of tea, a more important question struck her. Could she ever say no?
Cath is a woman born too ambitious, wise and brave for her time. While it takes her a bit to start to undo the bindings constraining her, once she does – there is no turning back for her.
Across every page, Meyer has created a more ‘realistic’ parallel world to the fantastical, nonsensical one first imagined by Lewis Carroll. Jest, a handsome and mysterious court joker, steals Cath’s heart, taking her through the Looking Glass maze to partake in a lively tea party. Iconic characters emerge as the story unfolds including the White Rabbit (with his watch), Hatta (soon to become Mad), and the Raven (offering a cryptic prophecy “One to be a murderer. One to be a Martyr. One to be a Monarch. One to go Mad”). Even the Cheshire cat appears and disappears often offering his keen observations: “Someone has to do something,” she repeated, though most of her fire had turned to smoke. “Yes, and that something shall be to ignore such a horrible incident and go on pretending nothing has happened at all.” Cheshire licked his paw and dragged it along his whiskers. “As is our way.”
Meyer has put the humanity back into the oft discarded caricature of the Queen of Hearts. While I don’t condone what Cath becomes, I know can imagine how she came to make her choices.
“Catherine," said the Marquess, placing one hand on Cath’s shoulder and one on his wife’s. "We know you’ve been through some . . . difficult things recently."
Anger, hot and throbbing, blurred in her vision.
"But we want you to be sure . . . absolutely sure this is what you want." His eyes turned wary beneath his bushy eyebrows. "We want you to be happy. That’s all we’ve ever wanted. Is this what’s going to make you happy?"
Cath held his gaze, feeling the puncture of Raven’s talons on her shoulder, the weight of the rubies around her throat, the itch of her petticoat on her thighs.
"How different everything could have been," she said, "if you had thought to ask me that before.“
Even though you know that this is an origin story for the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and you know how she ends up, you can't help but hope and want so much more for her. Marissa Meyer definitely captured the magic and whimsy of Wonderland while still putting her own spin on it.
If you are a fan of Alice in Wonderland, or enjoyed The Lunar Chronicles then this book is definitely for you. It'll spin a magical tale for you that will leave you in a puddle of emotions by the end.
A must read.
Top reviews from other countries

I did enjoy reading it and I really liked the story and the characters. There are a few twists and turns on the way even though it all leads you to the ending that you know is coming. All the way through you are hoping that it doesn’t happen but it was always clear what the fate of these characters would be and no matter how hard the characters try they can’t run from or escape it.
I thought it was an interesting take on how the Queen of Hearts came to be with a lot of the original storyline brought in e.g. the off with their head, the hatred of white roses, the croquet, etc. I just found it quite frustrating how weak Catherine was. How if she had just stood up for herself and stopped worrying about what everyone else thinks then she could have been happy and avoided her fate. I didn’t feel like she was fighting hard enough to avoid the king and his courtship/ proposal when she so adamantly didn’t want it. She knew what the future held not just for her but for Jest, Raven and Hatter and yet she jeopardised all of it with her decisions subjecting her friends to horrific fates.
The entire thing was like watching a car crash in slow motion and you know what is going to happen but you are powerless to stop it. I think knowing what the end of the story was going to be and knowing that it wouldn’t be a happy ending stopped my complete enjoyment of the novel (especially the last 25%) as it all just seemed like such an unhappy ending for all of the characters involved and it could have all been so easily avoided. I feel like although it was fated For Catherine to be queen I felt like it was always her decisions that led her down that path and sometimes I didn’t really understand the decisions or it seemed like the easy option. I guess I would have liked to see her try harder, to fight more for what she wanted instead of always submitting and to be forced into making a really difficult choice instead of it all being very accidental.
There were also some aspects I would have liked further detail on such as Catherine’s dreams or the trees growing around her that were never actually explained.
I did enjoy it, but it’s not a book I think I will read again.

This book is set before Alice in Wonderland and tells the story of how Catherine became the Queen of Hearts. I liked this different take on a retelling by telling the villains story. This has happened a few times recently in a few Disney films and it's something I really like. I feel like people most of the time there is a reason people have turned evil.
Catherine is young and full of dreams. She is an avid baker and dreams of opening her own bakery. She loves the way her treats make people happy. Catherine was such an endearing character that you really struggle to see how she can become the Queen of Hearts. Marissa does such a good job of making Catherine likeable. I kept hoping that somewhere something would go right for her and things wouldn't turn out so terrible.
I'm not a die-hard Alice in Wonderland fan but it did make me want to read the book (or maybe watch the film!) I loved that some of the characters like The Mad Hatter were in the book. It really made the story feel real.
I'd love this to become a series as I feel there is more that could come from these characters but I equally understand why it's a standalone. If you love a retelling with a twist then I would highly recommend this story. Especially the audio version. Rebecca has such a great voice I could listen to her read to me all day. She does such an excellent job of portraying the story and differentiating the voices.

Heartless by Marissa Meyer ❤️ @marissameyerauthor
I read this quite a while ago but it’s a book that has stuck in my mind so much that I think I’ll reread it soon! 🤍
Heartless is set in the world of Alice in Wonderland and follows the story of the creation of the Queen of Hearts ❤️ it contains all of the traditional characters and it’s packed with whimsical fun! 🌸
The story is one of forbidden love and following ones dreams 🌹 The entire book was paced very well and had plot twists throughout! It genuinely made me laugh and I thoroughly enjoyed spotting all the little nods to the traditional Alice in Wonderland that we know and love 🎩👒🐰
Towards the end my heart completely broke 💔 and usually this is something I hate in a book but it was done so beautifully that I admired the tragic turn in the story! Never before have I known how a book ends but still been shocked my the ending 💧
Easily 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and quite possibly my favourite standalone book ❤️


Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2021
Heartless by Marissa Meyer ❤️ @marissameyerauthor
I read this quite a while ago but it’s a book that has stuck in my mind so much that I think I’ll reread it soon! 🤍
Heartless is set in the world of Alice in Wonderland and follows the story of the creation of the Queen of Hearts ❤️ it contains all of the traditional characters and it’s packed with whimsical fun! 🌸
The story is one of forbidden love and following ones dreams 🌹 The entire book was paced very well and had plot twists throughout! It genuinely made me laugh and I thoroughly enjoyed spotting all the little nods to the traditional Alice in Wonderland that we know and love 🎩👒🐰
Towards the end my heart completely broke 💔 and usually this is something I hate in a book but it was done so beautifully that I admired the tragic turn in the story! Never before have I known how a book ends but still been shocked my the ending 💧
Easily 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and quite possibly my favourite standalone book ❤️


I did however enjoy the author's writing in this book. The author's way of describing things throughout the book was so whimsical and I feel that did wonders in bringing Hearts to life. All the odd and strange aspects from Alice in Wonderland were in this book and I really loved how she incorporated them throughout almost as cool easter eggs to spot for those that are fans of the original tale.
Overall, while this book didn't blow me away or wow me, I still enjoyed it and would still recommend it as I know people who absolutely adored it.

I loved this book, I really did. I absolutely adore Marissa Meyer's writing, it's so beautiful as if you're watching lace being made.
I would've have loved a little more romance scenes between Catherine and Jest, while it seemed fitting for the 'era' that this takes place that they wouldn't be very touchy-touchy, I feel it would add to their bonding.
The turning of Catherine toward the end of the book had me gripped so tightly that when I read the last line, I physically gasped.
This is what I'm looking for in books. I may not have cried like other readers at the events of the book but honestly the ending of the book, how Catherine became heartless is *chef's kiss*
Marissa Meyer definitely became a one-click author for me. This book is worth every penny.