Read this book. 

Saying that, seriously read this book.

This book, written by Colleen Oakes,  is loosely based on the untold back story about the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s beloved Alice in Wonderland books.

Being the Alice in Wonderland purist that I am, who hates all movies (except for the 1985 version of Alice in Wonderland/Alice through the Looking Glass with the Jabberwocky and Sammy Davis Jr as the hookah-smoking caterpillar) and hates pretty much anything Alice in Wonderland related,

I LOVE THIS BOOK!

 This book does not try to change, or adapt Alice in Wonderland at all. It tells about the Queen of Hearts’s broken childhood, which (I am assuming, because it turns out this is just the first book), leads to her hideous beheading fetish later on. I am guessing on that, because the way this book is going, I have no idea what to expect from the next books. But this book keeps with the visually, verbally-stunning imagery we all know and love from the original Alice.  You’ll discover white, spastic birds, decks of Cards, and the Wonderland world…and there happens to be monstrous, dark, towers, that are an entangled in an iron web of evil and misery.

So yes, very WTF-ish, just like the original Alice classics.

Kate McCulley (from Adventurous Kate), mentioned her cousin just wrote a first book. So being the avid reader I am, I jumped on it.   Thinking this is a first book ever (not first book in a spell-binding series), I expected a book obviously written by a newbie, with vague characters, little surprises, and a bit juvenile…but hey…I will totally read it to help support a new writer, especially one recommended by a friend.

What I got, was an amazingly complex, well-written, twist-filled, and mind-blowing plot, wrapped around complex characters that ooze Alice in Wonderland nostalgia, while simultaneously transporting you to a part of Wonderland you’ve never experienced.  It’s like a off-shoot prequel to the Alice story we all know and love.  It drips with references (some obvious, some precariously and carefully subtle) that keep true, or rather, are small odes, to the original Lewis Carroll novel, though this story remains totally its own masterpiece.

Queen of Hearts is a mind-blowing book which I totally recommend getting your hands on.

About Dani Blanchette

I am a freelance travel and music photographer and creator of GoingNomadic.com.
I love music, food, and exploring cities without guidebooks. I’ve flown a helicopter, hitchhiked down the east coast USA, and once snuck into the back of a zoo (in Serbia) and pet a lion.
I am always up for an adventure, and sometimes I videotape them.