Heartless - Marissa Meyer

'She fidgeted with a yellow ribbon. 'With this hat, it seems possible. Why' - her eyes brightened - 'this morning, I even had a fantasy that I'd single-handedly balanced the budget for the Royal treasury, and all of Hearts saw me as a hero.''
Hi!

I bought this book as a preorder because I was so excited about the blurb. It took me 2.5 months to waft through, so it might not come as a surprise that I didn't really completely enjoy it.

Heartless is written by Marissa Meyer, who's mostly famous for her Lunar Chronicles -series, which are reimaginations of classic fairy tales. (Which I've not read and after this one, never might) Heartless is different in that it's the origin story of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, so it's kind of like a supervillain's origin story. No, exactly like one.

Catherine Pinkerton is, at the heart of things, a very likeable character. She is the daughter of the Marchioness and has somehow caught the attention of the King of Hearts, who wants to marry her. This couldn't be farther away from Cath's wishes, as she just wants to open a bakery with her servant/best friend, Mary Ann. She also meets a court jester (called Jest, haha wow such creativity) who manages to steal her heart almost instantly. She can't just marry the King, whom she doesn't even love, can she?

What did work for me in this book is that it was generally well-written. The description was good and the dialogue okay. I liked most of the characters, and especially Cath herself and Mary Ann were very likeable. On the other hand, while I initially swooned over Jest much like Cath did, I soon found that as a character, he was boring, cardboardy, chivalrous, too good to be interesting in any level. This is really a bad omen in a book were much of the centre is taken by how much I'm supposed to like him and want him and Cath to be together. I must admit I would've never been sad if Cath had just gotten over him and started that bakery with Mary Ann.

The main issue I had, however, was the plot. It is difficult to write something where everyone knows the ending - hello, she's the Red Queen, of course she marries the King of Hearts - but it can be done well. Just look at Romeo and Juliet and all those other "hey guess what, at the end everyone dies" -type of books. It can work, but it needs to be done in a good way, if you hear me? What Heartless tried is this 'did she or did she not' -game where plot twist after another has you trying to figure out whether she did marry the King or not. Instead, the focus really should be on how that happened.

With all these plot twists that didn't feel too interesting, the story also moves at an agonisingly slow pace. Sometimes I could swear it doesn't know which story it wants to tell and thus ends up picking up a cherry on top of each cake, one at a time.

In the background, there's all this "women aren't suited for the man's world of business" and "you shouldn't sell your dowry because that's your only worth" -stuff going on and it was actually a quite interesting portrayal of the Victorian times when that was the focus (not often). There were also some interesting slight undertones of study of determinism, which was quite cool. All the characters eventually got their own fates and no matter how no one wants it, fate is fate.

Anyway, 2/5, wouldn't recommend but a ton of people seem to love this so maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this book in category 14: A book you’d choose by its summary on the book cover.

Gorsky - Vesna Goldsworthy

"I was hit by a wave of unexpected grief, the like of which I had felt neither when my parents died nor when I lost my country." 

Vesna Goldsworthy's Gorsky is a reimagination of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, set in 1990s London, filled with extravagant Russians with names quirkily borrowed from the work it was inspired by. It was also Waterstones' last month's Fiction Book of the Month, which is why I decided to give it a go. I think it's important to state here that I absolutely adore The Great Gatsby and have possibly read it a bit too many times.

It's a tale most people are probably familiar with, and Gorsky doesn't go too far, or even far enough, in attempts of giving it a twist. Nick - here it's a shortened version of his Serbian name Nikola - works at a charming little bookstore in Chelsea that makes virtually zero revenues, but where he meets Roman Borisovich Gorsky.  The rich Russian tasks him to gather glamorous books and pieces for his private library, which soon turns into an attempt at courting Natalia Summerscale. I don't know if this description makes the book sound interesting, but to me it was dull.

The language flows beautifully and the book makes great observations, but its true charm lies where it has the bravery to leave its inspiration behind - a miracle that doesn't happen often enough, especially towards the end. I devoured the book quickly, with the hope that I'd witness a turn that would take the classic story to a new level, take me by surprise and make me truly appreciate the beautiful piece in my hands. This - spoiler - never happened.

I think Goldsworthy's literary talent shouldn't be doubted - the beautiful lines aren't ripped from the original piece and the characters have charming traits on their own, from Nick's wavering love for his war-torn home country to Gery's - she replaces Jordan Baker as Nick's not quite love interest - imperfect, steroid-ruined beauty.

This being said, I would much rather see her tackle a plot of her own, because she didn't exactly do this one much justice. It's an unfair comparison because The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books, but I did try to like this more than I ended up doing. I found appreciation for the author's love of Russian works, gently peppered into Nick's speech and Gorsky's private collection, as well as for what she set out to do. I do however think that the book would have been better with a different plot, or perhaps a better take at the one it had. Especially towards the end it falls flat and thin, with Gorsky's death taking place without a lot of the misery it causes in the original. Gatsby dies while thinking he was getting everything he wanted, Gorsky dies again and again in a tape Nikola can't stop watching. Daisy escapes Long Island without an explanation, while Natalia returns to give Nikola her whole life story.

It wasn't an utter waste of my time.
I didn't dislike it.
I just don't know how to describe how much I just wish to rewrite half of the book and give it a new plot, to let it surprise its audience and have it remembered as something else than just a reimagination that just didn't quite work as well as the original. I'll be looking forward to Goldsworthy's next novel, as long as it isn't based on another beloved masterpiece.