★★★☆☆ I think I read this wrong

Heartless

Marissa Meyer

In her Acknowledgments for Heartless, Marissa Meyer writes

Years ago, I was out to lunch with my agenting team, discussing fairy tales and villains, when I told them, “I wish that Gregory Maguire would write the origin story for the Queen of Hearts.” To which my foreign rights agent, Cheryl Pientka, looked at me and said, “Marissa, why don’t you write it?”

She did that thing --Heartless is the result.

I would have enjoyed it more if I had begun by reading the Acknowledgments. (This happens to me often enough that I probably should just make a habit of beginning that way.) However, it's been long enough since I read Alice that I probably would have had to reread it first for Heartless to make sense, and let's be honest -- that was not gonna happen.

As it was, I could never figure out where Heartless was coming from, and when I got to the end, I couldn't figure out where it had got to. It's full of allusions to Alice, both Lewis Carroll's text and John Tenniel's famous illustrations. I remembered much of that well enough to catch many of the allusions, but not enough for the plot to make sense.

It was, in the end, an unsatisfying read. But I am willing to concede that may be my fault.

Heartless on Amazon

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