Heartless

3/5 stars
I was expecting for this book to be shorter. Although I will say that this is by far one of my favorite retellings of the Queen of Heart's origin story. We get a more in-depth picture as to why the Queen of Hearts came to be.

Summary:
Cath is being courted by the King, which he had to reluctantly accept due to the pressure of her parents. Meanwhile, she is dealing with the growing tension she has had since meeting Jest, as well as dealing with the number of Jabberwock attacks. She tries to try and escape marrying the King by entering a baking contest in order to win enough money to open her own bakery. This results in a disaster and the contest is cancelled. She finds out that she's in love with Jest at the same time she finds out that he is a high-ranking military official for the White Queen. His mission is to steal Cath's heart (the passionate heart of the Queen of Hearts) in order to end the war. Cath crosses the land of Chess in order to be queen without marrying the king. In order to enter, they have to pay a price, which is to see prophecies that reveal their futures. When Jest dies, Raven becomes a murderer, Cath becomes a pitiless Queen of Hearts, and Hatta goes mad. They try to escape it, but ultimately fail. They kill the Jabberwocky, who turns out to be Lady Peter. Jest is decapitated by Peter as an act of revenge. Cath makes a pact with the Three Sisters: they will bring Peter to Cath in exchange for the heart of a queen. She marries the King to obtain the heart and pay the price. They take her heart, and she immediately orders for Peter to be decapitated. This is carried out by Raven, bringing all the prophecies to completion.

Review:
One of my favorite aspects of this book is how the characters were depicted. Some of the best examples were from Cath and Jest. Jest was charming, intriguing, and bold. His character alongside Hatta provided a lot of serious and jarring scenes, as well as hilarious ones. At times, it's hard to do both, especially when you see them initially introduced as comic relief. Cath, on the other hand, was sweet and full of dreams. As the lies start to build up, we see the shift begin to happen, especially as she is fooling the King. By the end, it isn't as surprising to see how she became the unforgiving Queen of Hearts. I didn't necessarily hate any of the characters, as they all had their own intentions behind their actions.

Some of the things I didn't like about this book were the instant love between Jest and Cath. as well as how convoluted and twisted it got towards the middle. I felt that there really wasn't that much development in terms of how Jest and Cath fell in love (this may be more of a me thing since I was focused on understanding the worldbuilding). Also, the introduction of the Land of Chess and the Three Sisters threw me off and left me with a lot to process alongside what I already understood about the worldbuilding.

I would recommend this book but only if I was aware that the person liked villain origin stories or fairytale retellings. It's not a bad book, but it's also not the best book Marissa Meyer has ever written.