Heartless

Introduction

Heartless was written by Marissa Meyer and published on November 8th, 2016, by Macmillan Children’s Books publishing company. I first read this book when I was around ten or eleven years old, and I initially wanted to read because I had read and loved Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series. I was not ready for the emotion packed into the ending of this story, and every few years since, the book would cross my mind. When I went book shopping recently, I saw it and decided it would be a wonderful Valentine’s Day review for those of us who don’t feel like reading romances with happy endings. Don’t worry, for those of you who want something traditional, I’ll be posting one of those soon. If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend going into it knowing nothing about it, but if you want to get a feel for it beforehand, the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section is a great place to start. For those who have read it and are interested in my insights, the Thoughts section is for you. If you would like to start up a conversation about this book, the comment sections on this post and the social media posts will be open, all I ask is that everyone be respectful of everyone else’s opinions. Enjoy!

If you want to keep up with Marissa Meyer and her work, you can visit her website, https://www.marissameyer.com. If you would like to follow her on social media. You can do so @marissameyerauthor.

Plot

Before she was the Queen of Hearts, all Catherine wished for was to be Heart’s greatest baker. So, what happened to make her so heartless?

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

I love this book and the Lunar Chronicles series because I really enjoy putting twists on old fairytales, and Meyer does this very well. Her inclusion of so many classic characters and nursery rhymes brought life to this story when it was dull. This prequel explains so much from the original on how and why certain characters ended up the way they did. Not only did she twist the fairytale itself, but the concept of these stories as a whole.

I was surprised that I like Catherine. I usually prefer stronger female main characters, but while her cowardice in the face of her parents was occasionally annoying, her passion tended to outshine that. Her inability to go against her parents’ wishes is understandable, and it makes me feel bad for her, but she was so insistent that she could and would run away while not making steps to jump that last hurdle. In relation to that, I liked that Mary Anne kept her grounded in reality when Cath got too swept away in her dreams of a far less glamorous and privileged life.

Jest and Hatta are so mysterious and interesting that getting to know them and learning more about them was a driving force for me when I read this book. Hatta is also very honest with Cath on all of his opinions, including what he thinks of her. It’s a strange dichotomy to know what he’s thinking much of the time without knowing about him beyond the surface level he allows Cath to see.

I had the thought while reading this book that I must have been a very patient child (I was not) when reading this, or maybe I was so swept up in Hearts that I didn’t notice how slowly the plot progressed. I felt that if it hadn’t been a reread for me, I may have taken longer on it because I didn’t feel connected to it until later on in the story. The scenes including Jest and the King were my favorites, but they began very few and far between, and I started getting more invested in the book around the halfway mark. I did feel like I knew right off the bat - even as a kid - which way Catherine’s heart would sway, which could have made the slow burn enticing had it been focused on a bit sooner.

It felt to me that sometimes plot points were brought in and forgotten for a while before being revisited, but there were times it felt less like a clue and more like it had been forgotten about given the length of time between its introduction and continuation, which was unfortunate because they were very interesting. The mystery behind Jest is the most consistent aspect, which makes sense given romance is the focal point.

The ending is - in my eyes - the best part of this book, and it is exactly as adventurous as I would expect it to be. There is a distinct moment when everything just clicks. From the beginning, you know how the book ends because we get to see all of these characters when Alice ventures through the looking glass, and we know where they ended up. Even knowing this didn’t prepare me for the ending when I first read it, and it still hit me hard when I reread it this year. The circumstances leading to it and the difficult choices made make it more tragic and the ending was just chilling.

While I love the emotionally charged ending of this book and most of the characters, the slow-moving pace and inconsistently included plot lines do give me pause. I did enjoy the book, but it can be difficult to get into in the beginning. For that reason, I rate this book a 7.5/10.

Thoughts

Jest and Hatta are my favorite characters. They were so mysterious that when we finally learn about them, it feels like a tipping point in their relationships with Catherine while also providing satisfaction in knowing them better. This is even more interesting when I consider that Jest wasn’t present in Wonderland when Alice got there, and Hatta had already gone mad. How and why did that happen? It slowly builds to the ending - we’ll get there - and it has a really nice payoff. 

I found the character dynamics to be interesting, especially the court posturing with the other nobility. Oddly enough, the King may have been the most genuine of them, and I do think that he and Catherine could have been good friends had they been allowed to be. I will say, while I didn’t dislike the King - I almost felt bad for him - his spineless behavior was irritating. Jest behaved like more of a king, even as a Rook. The Jabberwocky is a great example of both the inconsistent plot pacing and the courage of each character. It was introduced very early on, but it wasn’t revisited until way later, and it was largely ignored by most of the characters.

Something I did like was the clear contrast in how Catherine feels about Jest versus the King. The mockery of a courtship with the King versus the burning she feels for Jest was done well, but it was made tragic when you can tell she won’t be brave enough to defy her parents. That is until after Jest relays his mission and plan - which was all resolved very quickly given the nature of it - and she prepares to run with him. She finally makes this decision in time for everything to fall apart.

As I mentioned above, the ending is my favorite part of this book. I already discussed how even knowing the outcome doesn’t make the events leading to it any easier to face, but there is another layer to it. All of it was unnecessary. They were warned by Cheshire, the three girls, and Hatta again and again to not go through the door, lest they all be doomed. They were literally looking at their future together, but Cath’s heart couldn’t allow her to leave Mary Anne for dead. You hear her screams and then the Peter Peter rhyme and know what happens next, leaving you with a monarch, a murderer, a madman, and a martyr. At the end of it all, her parents ask what would make her happy, and she correctly states that everything could have been different if they had asked her that before. Four tragic fates. No happy endings. I said above that Meyer flips the concept of a fairytale on its head, and she does this by making sure nobody gets their “happy ever after.” I love the devastating tragedy of it all and it had me thinking about it (and crying) long after I closed the book.