The backstory written by a Wonderland fan on how the Queen of Hearts came to be. Although this book instantly drew me in with its fancy cover and tempting blurb, the contents did not appease my (maybe too high?) standards.
Spoilers ahead!
To summarize the entire story, this book is about a girl from royalty that tries to escape with her lover because she doesn’t have enough backbone to stand up against her parents, who want her to marry the King of Hearts. A blood-thirsty Jabberwock is thrown in and in the process her lover gets killed, causing the girl to collapse from emotional distress and turn into the foul and fierce QoH.
Introducing: Catherine Pinkerton. Our soft-hearted protagonist that’s torn between her heart, her dreams, and the expectations laid on her by her parents. Not much of a problem – and it’s in fact great, I bet lots of younger readers can relate to the stress they feel burdened with from their parents – except the character development. Really?
How does this spineless girl who can’t seem to make up her mind and confront her parents for the pressure placed on her turn into the ruthless and merciless Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland? The answer lies within her heart: Jest, the enigmatic and mysterious boy that seemingly appears out of nowhere and leaves just as abruptly. But hold on! In terms of realism, wouldn’t it make more sense for Catherine to turn depressed and lose her fire after satisfying her thirst for vengeance by killing Sir Peter? She has literally no reason to kill other people afterwards. Considering this book is introduced as the backstory behind QoH, it doesn’t make sense how this cake baking, heart aching girl would turn into the temperamental Queen that kills anyone that angers her in Alice in Wonderland. Right, her heart is gone – but surely her some part of personality is still in there? Hatta also mentioned how Jest would not have wanted to see her in such a desperate state.
On the other hand, I do understand why Cath decided what to do. When your heart is broken and basically gone, all that’s left is pretty much burning rage. Fury against the King for ‘loving’ her (really, there wasn’t love), fury against her parents who didn’t understand her until the VERY VERY end, and fury against Mary Ann (her ex-best friend) for betraying her (Mary Ann told Cath’s parents about Jest and her secret relationship after both of them went to the treacle well in order to tend to Cath’s wounds after fighting with the Jabberwock and did not come back) and for the reason she went back to Hearts when she could have FINALLY escaped to Chess with Jest, Hatta and Raven. So two sides of the coin although if this was a stand-alone book, it would have been even sadder to see Cath succumb to sadness and angst.
On a side note, I’m also pretty pissed at how Meyer decided Cath’s course of actions. Meyer dropped hints throughout the story, implying the Jabberwock had some connection to Sir Peter – the blue carousel from the Lion’s hat that was dropped in Peter Peter pumpkin patch, the sugar pumpkin cake’s effect on Turtle (also from Peter’s patch), the pumpkin cage (ALSO FROM PETER’S PATCH) – so I’m sure I’m not the only one who figured out halfway there had to be some relation; it was unexpected, to say the least, when I found out Sir Peter’s WIFE was the Jabberwock.
So Catherine left some loose ends when she ran off to the Looking Glass and she didn’t expect Mary Ann, the smart one, to go there and find some sort of cure for Turtle (it was after all, Cath and her who stole the sugar pumpkin, turned it into a cake and entered it into the baking competition)? Yes, Catherine was in a hurry to get away from the King and her parents, but to say she didn’t expect any of this to happen would be unprecedented. What would have been better was to spread her investigation of the Jabberwock in the first 350 pages.
There were two main obstacles to her and Jest’s love (the ultimate goal): her inevitable engagement to the King and the Jabberwock. Our protagonist tried to solve problem number 1 but neglected problem number 2 until the very end. Also is anyone going to talk about how the Vorpal Sword just seemingly appears out of thin air from Jest’s magical hat? Jest isn’t part of the Chessian royal family and there’s no logical explanation to how the sword would have gotten there in the first place. Then again, we’re talking about the outlandish Wonderland here so I can definitely overlook that detail.
But… this entire time I’ve been reading this story, I’m just getting vibes of tragic aristocrat girl and her star-crossed love for the lowly court joker. Where’s the Wonderland part? Right, talking animals, a soon-to-be mad Hatter and a monster known as the Jabberwock. But I do faintly recall these aspects in other fantasy novels. The only thing that really keeps me tethered to Hearts is the iconic Mad Hatter.
Like several other romance novels, there is seemingly NO REASON for Jest, the court joker from Chess, (the land that borders Hearts) to fall in love with Catherine. Love at first sight maybe? But it’s almost unacceptable that the only reason Jest noticed our dainty protagonist because of her ostentatious red dress. Let’s not forget his mission: steal the passionate and fierce heart from the Queen of Hearts in order to stop the never ending war between the Red and White queendoms. He’s distracted on the very first day of work, coincidentally by the same girl whose heart he needs to steal. Small error here – Cath is passionate but definitely NOT fierce. Throughout the book she’s indecisive and gives up easily. She only tries once to convince her parents to allow her to pursue her lifelong dream and she’s always torn between her loyalty for her family and her love. In fact, she willingly accepted the King when he proposed to her and only retracted that when Jest found out another way for them to be together. Pretty unfair for poor Jest. Is she in or is she out?
Following the same problem, this leads us to the King. Practical problems first. How does a stout, over jovial man rule an entire kingdom? With people like Sir Peter and Jack (the Knave of Hearts that has a funny and odd like-hate relationship with Catherine that I can’t seem to understand) mingling inside Hearts, surely some kind of dispute is bound to rise up even before the Jabberwock came along and messed up the King’s picture perfect world? And to put it bleak – the King only ‘fell in love’ with Catherine because of his insatiable greed for the yummy treats that she baked. At least, from a reader’s perspective, I can see no other reason why this love would occur (a stretch but maybe pressured by the Marchioness?).
While we’re in on the topic of unrequited love and unconvincing love, Hatta is bound to drop into the mix. Like many other readers that has been writing and discussing about Hatta, I’m actually confused whether this hatter loves or likes Jest. It appears as though he is jealous of Catherine and Jest’s romantic relationship, but on the other end I could also assume that it’s the friendship protectiveness we all sometimes feel for our friend when they fall in love with some random girl from a foreign country? Personally, I think it would have been nice if Hatta and Jest had a heart-to-heart talk about their relationship and everything in between. It would have cleared things up a lot in terms of what relationship Jest and Hatta had with each other, which was left pretty much open to interpretation (I’ll stick to a gay Hatta though ^^).
After getting all the critiques out of the way, time to do some commendation! The bittersweet ending made my heart break. It just shows not all characters are protected by plot armor. Jest, however abruptly he appeared, made my tears flow when he sacrificed himself in order to protect Catherine. Such heroism! The words and phrases in the book also provided a new way of speaking, which is a nice change from the usual language we use now. It definitely gave me a sense of old-fashioned ness, adding on to the whimsical feeling the story evoked. And the riddles! The awesome riddles and the quoting of Edgar Allen Poe. It’s awesome that Meyer did her research on the original Alice in Wonderland extensively, adding in aspects that I’d almost forgotten existed in the original book.
Whew, been a wild ride. My first review but I feel like I already wrote too much 😛