Review: Heartless

Book information

Title: Heartless

Author: Marissa Meyer

Where to buy: Amazon.

'Yellow and shining, sweet and tart. His eyes had been bright like lemons ready to fall from a tree.'

- Narrator

'By-the-bye.'

- Cheshire Cat

'I meant no offense. A laugh like that is richer than gold to a man of my position. I will make it my life's work to hear the sound again. Every day, if it pleases you. No—twice a day, and at least once before breakfast. A royal joker must set the highest of expectations.'

- The Joker

Perhaps we know each other in the future and you're only remembering backward."

- The Joker

'Ah, but you can't be Frank. You've already told me that your name is Catherine.'

- The Joker

'A crown doesn't really do much of anything. Just sits on one's head, quite useless. Oh, I suppose it sparkles.'

- Catherine

'Gossiping always leads to spoiled milk.'

- Margaret

'Impossible is my specialty.'

- Joker

'Your so-called morals are nothing but an excuse to act better than the rest of us. To treat us as though we are not as clever or as righteous as you, when really, all you're doing is trying to hide your own insecurities! It's childish and contemptible and I've put up with it long enough.'

- Catherine

'Let me give you the heart of a queen.'

- Catherine

Dislikes: 

The beginning of the book is plain. The first sentence doesn't make a reader excited to read more.

Word choice. Dislike of vocabulary used in the writing. Sometimes hard to understand or to follow. 

After a character spoke it wasn't always described how they spoke so it was sometimes hard to follow which pitch or loudness someone in the book spoke.

I liked one joke of the Jester, but except that he isn't funny and he doesn't seem to have any personality trait except his 'I am funny and entertain everyone at the kingdom' trait. His character fell flat. 

The romance is too fast. They met the night before and she already dreams of him and compares him to the king? And thinks about him quite often? Women usually take longer to fall in love than men and seeing this disappoints me. 

She is thinking too soon of a future with the joker (Mary Anne, her and him working at her bakery). 

'You are different', 'You are not like the others' cliché. Saying that if Joker would have come to some other girl's bedroom windows they would have thrown rocks at him (page 144). As the century is known for a person to always be at their best behaviour and even say yes to arranged marriage they don't want I literally can't imagine how someone would do something like that. They would probably call their guards and not involve further in the scene. The cliché is also annoying, please stop putting it in books. 

I don't understand why the Hatter's name is Hatta, it's pronounced the same so why not write it the same?

Nothing seems original. 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' riddle as well as the Jabberwocky poem is all taken into the book and there is no world building that is unique or any character. Everything seems the same, just less exciting and less describing, as it's more focused to describe feelings and the way one speaks than the world itself which is the most important part in Alice in Wonderland. 

American vocabulary for a British setting. At the beginning of the book it was worse than later as the word favorite was used instead of favourite and later on in the book (page 160) it was used humor instead of humour and realizing instead of realising (page 181). And there were other words, but can't remember them anymore. It's just stupid if they speak in British English most of the time and then some words are just in American English, it makes no sense and as someone who learnt British English themselve I can say it's not that hard. And a bit more determination for a book would have been nicer. 

Protagonist makes stupid decisions. For example on page 175 with a stick she pokes the turtle to move while it hides in its shell instead of grabbing the shell and run. 

Why did Catherine laugh when the Joker was literally fighting for his life? I get it that she was thinking of a funny scene, but isn't that a bit of an inappropriate moment to laugh and also to write down such a scene? (Page 300)

Throughout the story, every time when Catherine felt unwell about a matter it was always described as 'her stomach tightened', again and again. Instead of finding new words to describe that feeling of hers. 

The first plot twist about the Jabberwock was unfortunately predictable, I already knew it, but the second of the Jabberwock wasn't, but I didn't like it as it was different in the original Alice in Wonderland story and it just didn't make sense for me.

Likes:

Writing style. It's good. Emotions are good told. Can distinguish different speeches for each character, making them unique and giving them their own voice.

Good description of surroundings, emotions and thoughts. Wide variety of words and vocabulary. 

I can't say for sure as I haven't read that many books of sooner eras and I wasn't living in that time but I think the vocabulary of this book and the speech of the characters adjusted quite well to the era's time. 

The why-is-a-raven-like-a-writing-desk poem is correctly translated and didn't lose the original meaning behind it, as many translations from it made it go lost.

I like that the protagonist mentiones the flaws of the Joker and not just love him, no matter what he does. She has her own pride and that's what I like. 

Almost every character is flat, except Catherine — the main character. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding her and her reasons, but she has so many likes, dislikes and dreams. And also worries like how her parents be disappointed if she turned the king down and so on. But she has her own personality.

The Hatter is more crazy and interesting than he was at the beginning of the book. Out of nowhere he has dreams, secrets and a personality trait we never saw before. I agree with him on many ways, that he wasn't fault for what happened and that Catherine didn't deserve Jest. And that one scene where his eyes got glassy was so important and made such a great impact on me when reading it. He grew on me, and I would consider him my favourite character out of the book. (He was literally the only one who was smart enough to take the prophecy serious).

Chapter 37 + 38 changed my view of this book completely. The drama, the action. The character development. Just everything. Yeah, some characters are still flat and the romance wasn't that good and they both fell in love without much reasoning and it was badly told, but near the end the books actually starts to get interesting. And we start to understand the two main characters more now. 

The ending was perfect and exactly how I imagined it. The book title already gave it away, but it was still maleficent. Her villain arc blossomed and we got a better insight of her feelings and how the Queen of Hearts became the Queen of Hearts we all know. 

How it works: Only everything that is lower than 9 gets reduced from the final rating. Depending on how strong it inflicted the overall enjoyment of reading it affects differently. 

[ Story 7 / 10 ] -

[ Characters 5 / 10 ] -

[ Triggering 0 / 10 ] +

[ Topic/Genre 9 / 10 ] +

[ Writing style 7 / 10 ] -

[ Grammatic and spelling 8 / 10 ] -

[ Ending 10 / 10 ] +

Final Rating

3/5

If the end of the book wouldn't have been this good I would have actually given the book only two stars. I needed to force myself through it, literally, but I am glad I did as the end was quite relieving compared to the rest of the story.

Started the book: 01. January 2024

Finished the book: 18. March 2024

Wrote the review: 18. March 2024