Personal Rating: 4.5 Stars Goodreads Rating: 4.1 Stars 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. (goodreads.com) You might be thinking: “Corrie, I thought you didn’t like romance novels. This is clearly a romance novel, why the heck did you read it?” To which I would humbly reply: “Are you kidding me? Marissa Meyer wrote this book! Marissa Meyer is the queen! Who cares if it has romance in it, I’d read a book by Marissa Meyer even if she said it was a thousand page book about a man brushing his teeth.” So, anyway… some of you might know that I’m unconditionally and irrevocably in love with the Lunar Chronicles, which is also by Marissa Meyer. You can probably imagine that I was absolutely thrilled to find this new book by her waiting under the Christmas tree with my name on it. I didn’t read it right away because I was in the midst of another book, which normally would not be a problem for me to start another book, but when it’s a book that I’m going to want to spend every second of my time with I don’t want other books to be distracting me. When I finally did get around to reading it, however… OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS SAKES ALIVE! THIS BOOK WAS MASTERFUL! WONDERFUL! GORGEOUS AND FANTASTICAL! I KNOW WHY IT’S CALLED HEARTLESS BECAUSE IT WILL TEAR OUT YOUR HEART AND SQUISH IT LIKE PLAY-DOUGH AND DROP IT IN THE DIRT AND BURY IT AND THEN DIG IT UP AGAIN AND FORCEFULLY SHOVE IT IN YOUR CHEST AND THEN RIP IT OUT AGAIN! MY WORD, IT WAS GOOD THOUGH! In anycase, I truly enjoyed the book (except for the parts where I was sobbing uncontrollably) and found it to be an interesting interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland characters and themes. While the romance is a large part of the plot, there is also an action storyline that is not mentioned in the synopsis. This action plot will grip readers, even if it isn’t that hard to figure out the mystery of it. This book will probably make you somewhat hungry as baked goods are described in detail. The main character loves to bake and I found my mouth watering at many of the descriptions of her tarts, cakes, and other treats. The characters were all unique and immensely entertaining, displaying the human condition well, even though a good portion of them were not human characters. Our heroine, Cath, is particularly interesting because of the fact that you go into the book knowing that she is the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. One wonders how the main character can be the villain, but Her Majesty Queen Meyer does an excellent job of writing Cath over the course of the book and keeping her from being a static character while still allowing her development to be slow enough (or abrupt enough when needed) to be realistic. Despite what the summary may have you think, there is no love triangle in this book. I won’t delve into further detail because that would involve spoilers, but I’ll tell you right now that the romance in this book is not particularly triangular where Cath is involved. The romantic interest of this book, Jest, is not what I was expecting. While I went into the book expecting a dark and brooding cliche, I was pleasantly surprised by Jest’s playful demeanor and generally happy outlook. And then there’s Jest and Cath together… THEY ARE MY OTP AND AIN’T NO ONE GONNA TELL ME DIFFERENT. THEY ARE SO SWEET AND PERFECT AND, AND, AND I REALLY CAN’T SAY MUCH OF ANYTHING WITHOUT SPOILERS BUT I THINK I’M GOING TO BREAK DOWN CRYING AGAIN. The difficult thing about this book is that I want readers to know what they are getting into when they read it, but I also really don’t want to spoil it for anyone because it’s such a good book and I would feel terrible if I took away an ounce of enjoyment of this book with a spoiler. With that in mind, I will be including two spoiler sections for this post. The first shall have the vague spoilers that will warn you about somethings in this book that may spare you from reading something you really don’t want to read but refrain from any details. The second spoiler section with divulge the details of these warnings in case you’re curious or you want to know what if I’m being overdramatic about the vague spoilers. To read the spoilers click the “Read More” thingy in the bottom right corner of the post (unless you went directly to the post link, in which case you just need to scroll down). To those of you who don’t want to read the spoilers, I thank you for your time and if you do pick up this book I hope you enjoy it! I highly recommend it, as you can probably tell, but it’s not for everyone. If you have or want to read it let me know in the comments. Thank you! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18584855-heartless
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