Heartless is a standalone fictional book about Catherine, the Queen of Hearts, and her life before Alice came to wonderland written by Marissa Meyer. This book tells the story of how she went from being a young lady who just wanted to open up her bakery to the evil Queen that we all know today. It talks about forbidden love between two people that can’t be together because of social status, and one-sided love. As well as tragic love, the death of the man she wanted to be with, drove her to become the Queen that we all know today. 

I found the book to be very interesting and enjoyed reading it very much. The riddles that were said between characters and how descriptive the setting was made you feel that you were really in Wonderland with them and the adventure and action sense that was throughout the book. I found that it wasn’t hard to get into, and it grabbed my attention when I first started reading. I also enjoyed that they introduced characters from the original Alice in Wonderland and that it gave a brief description of what those characters were like before Cath went mad. 

The author mentioned the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit throughout the story and that they were actually friends before she became queen. By adding these two characters I feel that it better explains why the characters in the original story are the way that they are.

 I found it not hard to fall in love with Cath’s main love interest in the story just as much as she did. With him constantly showing up randomly in her dreams and wherever she was he always made her feel more comfortable wherever they were and that reflected onto me. When I read his name I immediately felt happier than before, simply because I knew that he do or say something witty, like helping her sneak out of her window in the middle of the night to do to a “real tea party,” or making comments about checking to make sure that her legs are actually there. 

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Alice in Wonderland because it takes place in a time before that story and has many of the same characters, it also gives detail about what they were like before she became queen. I also recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy books because this, is unfortunately not based on a true story. Also to anyone who enjoys reading prequels to other books and likes to compare the two to see if that was what they pictured it to be like before the original story happened.