Colleen Oakes

The first novel in Colleen Oakes’s epic, imaginative series tells the origin of one of the most infamous villains—the Queen of Hearts. This is not the story of the Wonderland we know. Alice has not fallen down a rabbit hole. This is a Wonderland where beneath each smile lies a secret, each tart comes with a demand, and only prisoners tell the truth. Dinah is the princess who will one day reign over Wonderland. She has not yet seen the dark depths of her kingdom; she longs only for her father’s approval and a future with the boy she loves. But when a betrayal breaks her heart and threatens her throne, she is launched into Wonderland’s dangerous political game. Dinah must stay one step ahead of her cunning enemies or she’ll lose not just the crown but her head.

Queen of Hearts

Mythos

3/5 stars


 Initial Thoughts: 
From the beginning, I knew I would have a biased opinion about this book as I love Alice in Wonderland as well as well-written villain origin stories. I thought I would give this a higher rating. I was a bit disappointed in how the plot was handled. The first time I read this, it completely went over my head as I was more focused on the setting and the original characters were integrated. As I reread it, I found fewer and fewer reasons to like the book.

Characters:
Overall, my favorite character was still the Mad Hatter. I really liked how his character was integrated and how creative he was as a character. It was also a nice change from Dinah's usual blatant hatred. Dinah has to be one of my least favorite characters, along with the Chesire Cat. Although I liked Dinah at first, I grew tired of her narration throughout the book. I understand how she feels like an outcast in court due to her father, but that didn't give her the right to be cruel to Vittiore without getting to know her.

As previously stated, she spent the majority of her time in a rage, which made her an unreliable narrator. This can be seen through how she views other characters. For example, we are set up to believe that the villain of this book is Chesire. Yet Dinah shows none of this through her interactions with him. We barely get to know him as a character, much less his motivations. This makes him useless as a villain. In any case, we see the king as more of a villain due to how she views his actions. This also happens with Vittiore. We never get to know her because of how much Dinah hates her. We can get hints as to why she is here and what her motivations are, but that is quickly overshadowed by Dinah's hatred.

 To Sum it Up 
As much as I originally enjoyed this book, further inspection of the writing style and Dinah's character have ruined it for me. Dinah's anger tends to affect how other characters are written. I still give it a 3-star rating. I would not recommend it to anyone else. I will not be rereading this book, but I will continue reading the next book in the series out of curiosity. From there, I'll decide if it's worth it to read the series. I'm hoping Dinah grows because I really want to enjoy the series and don't want to abandon it.

Gisela Ayala 

Queen of Hearts of is a retelling/origin story of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, but in this story we see the Queen of Hearts, Dinah start off as the Princess of Hearts who lives in the kingdom of Wonderland, ruled by her brutal father, the King of Hearts. And when I say brutal he is brutal. Power hungry, controlling ruler; everyone lives in fear of of him, including Dinah. 

From the beginning of the story, I can immediately see why Dinah is a bit bitter; the King of Hearts has no regard for her. Atually I will even go as far as to say he hates her. At first I thought that maybe he just disliked her and was upset that his son a.k.a Charles, a.k.a the Mad Hatter, is... well, mad. But no the king hates Dinah with a passion. He either ignores her or throws all his rage at her. Besides the king's anger, something else is brewing in Wonderland. Secrets and some sort of plot is happening, and someone wants to warn Dinah and let her know. 

Dinah of course is growing up and she can be somewhat of a brat in the beginning of the book, but I mean you see who her father is? This also makes me question whether she will really turn evil (we know she might) or if she already has the tendency to turn evil, even before the events of the book happen. But she does try to figure out what is going on and I give her that credit. I love a flawed character. 

Also, might I add that I love love LOVE her brother Charles, the Mad hatter. 

This story is definitely a darker retelling/origin story than the original story, even though I already belive the Alice in Wonderland is a pretty dark story when you think of it. Whispers in the night and crazed dreams. I read some parts at night and got creeped out. Dinah's character evolved throughout the book, and she gained my sympathy. I really thought the book was going one way, and then I got pulled in the complete diffefrent direction!! Some people may see it coming, but I didn't. 

Overall Colleeng Oakes created this perfectly vivid wonderland and I'm so sad I have to wait another year for the next book.

Illeana

Maria Banning

Carley Whitehead

2.5 stars

I'm really underwhelmed by this. It wasn't a terrible book, but it was almost boring? I dunno, I just wish it was more, because I liked the premise of it.

bere mendez

i enjoyed like the last half. what pisses me off is that none of your questions get answered... everything is left unresolved and if i want to figure it out i HAVE to read the second book. also the main character is so annoying but i kind of expected that.

Kaley Catron

Honestly what. It was okay until like the last two chapters and then BAM! I definitely want to know what happens next!!

Bec Drayton

This book is superb! It was fast paced, well thought out and excellently written! I love any adventure in Wonderland and this book was no exception! I loved the characters and plot and everything else.

Katie Holem

Stephanie Haynes

Melea Mullican

I love Alice in Wonderland, so when I found this retelling, I couldn't wait to read it. Unfortunately the "prequel" story of the Queen of Hearts, didn't quite live up to my hopes. 

This book had a lot going for it plot wise. I really liked the political take on this fantastical story. I think Oakes did a great job with the action and with creating new disturbing things about Wonderland. The end was action packed, and I really enjoyed the fast paced plot.

However, while the plot excelled, the character development and writing did not. I was expecting a strong female character (or at least developing into one) in Dinah. Instead we got a scared, spoiled, and stubborn girl that thought she was owed everything just because she was a princess. While I enjoyed the take on the traditional characters such as the Mad Hatter, Cheshire, and the rabbit (Harris), they weren't strong enough supporting characters to help carry the story for me. Oakes writing style is more tell not show, and she has a flare for the dramatics. Unfortunately, this style of writing just wasn't for me. 

Overall, this wasn't a bad book, but did not live up to my hopes of what this idea could have been. Again, I think she had a wonderful idea, but the execution needed some work. I will probably continue the story at some point, just with a bit lower expectations than I went into this book with. If you love Alice in Wonderland, I recommend giving this one a quick try.

Celia Adams

Oh my god I did not expect this book to be so dark????? I'm not sure why but that was a huge shock to me. That being said, man this book was good. I couldn't put it down, which is not a good thing considering I stayed up until 2 am on Black Friday. But yeah, Colleen Oakes did a great job. The character of Dinah was deep and really interesting, I thought she was unique as a YA protagonist as she was pretty unique as she wasn't super innocent or over sensibly 'good'. I also really liked how Colleen worked different characters from the original Carrol story into her book as new, more human and interesting characters. The world building of Wonderland was great- I just wish there had been more of it as I find different takes on Wonderland fascinating. Let's see what else; the supporting cast of characters was very strong, and I admire Colleen's writing in that I feel the same as Dinah in my opinions of these characters, even the ones like Vittiore who I technically know did nothing wrong; that's just the persuasion of the writing in Dinah's POV. I definitely recommend this book, but not if your looking for a light-hearted, fun novel. It's dark and emotional and frankly, just excellent.

Chantale

I really liked this one and really can't wait for the next book in this series.

Cath

I’ll break this review into two categories: What I liked about it and what I disliked about it. I have equal sayings to both divisions so I think it’ll be easier to write out the pros and cons of the book in contrary to what I enjoyed or despised.

So first of all, I have very, very mixed emotions about this book.

WHAT I DISLIKED:

For a Fantasy novel, I have to say that this book was way too short. There was a serious lack of tension and build ups which made the story very, oh, what’s the word...bumpy? Everything happens so abruptly that you get left being very confused on which direction the story is heading. It’s like a car that keeps steering down a rocky path and ends up being completely, inevitably lost. I guess in a sense it makes the plot line somewhat unpredictable (because seriously, you’ll be asking yourself a lot of questions when reading this book), but everything was happening so fast in so little time and without any ‘fill ups’ to the many plot holes, the story just continues to head down a weird direction which ended up being quite senseless and absurd.

Dinah was also quite a peculiar character. One minute she can be kindhearted and gentle, the next bratty and annoying. She reminds me so much of Queen Levana from Fairest (whom I’m not the biggest fan of. Ugh.). Oh, and the chemistry between Dinah and her love interest?…..no. I don’t see anything between them. No spark, no love, no gooey gushes coming out of me. Nada. They just don’t seem to compliment each other very well. They were really awkward towards one another and there was just nothing going on between them. Honestly, I feel like they would’ve been better off as individual characters who shared no bond with one another. They would’ve been much stronger, too.

WHAT I LIKED:

I like the author’s interpretation of the Alice in Wonderland characters. A lot. I loved Harris, Cheshire, and Charles. I think they were all very unique. I would very much have liked them to have bigger roles in contrary to the main protagonists themselves. I think the three would have very interesting perspectives and I hope to see more of them in the next book.

As aggravating Dinah was, I have to admit that she is indeed a very passionate person. She would do anything to protect the people she loves, and her affection towards Charles and Harris, to me, made up for her foul actions. There wasn’t much character development going on towards the end of the story, but the climax got me rooting for Dinah. Woohoo! There’s the main protagonist I was anticipating! I was starting to get worried of the ending, but even though it ended in a cliffhanger, I wouldn’t have ended it any other way. A clean wrap-up to a mess that is the progression of the story. I’m quite impressed and very much relieved.

This book has so much potential, and I hope to see it being maximised in the second book, Blood of Wonderland. Thank you so much HarperCollins for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Queen of Hearts

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