Heartless by Marissa Meyer (2016)

Marissa Meyer does it again. This time she takes on Alice in Wonderland and gives us the back story to the mean Queen of Hearts. After finishing Heartless, I went back to reread the parts of the original book about the queen and watched the Disney movie. I realized that Meyer had included much of that story - including the short, ineffectual king, Mad Hatter and his tea party and all the characters around the table. She had the croquet game with groundhog balls and flamingo clubs. I could imagine the cards hitting the ground as I had the image in my head from the movie.

Turns out Catherine was really a sweet girl from a rich family whose dream was to open a bakery, as she loves to bake, but her parents want her to marry the king. (Didn't the Queen of Hearts yell something about tarts?) A joker shows up, who captures her heart, but it all goes wrong, when Peter the Pumpkin Eater, from the nursery rhyme, shows up with his wife. Jabberwocky makes an appearance - I had to look up the reference, it was a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll in a sequel to Alice. We see that there are other worlds - like the world of Chess that has a White Queen and a Red Queen that are constantly at war. All in all, quite entertaining.