Will no longer be reading or reviewing this book due to lack of interest in the title, and the fact that the title has been archived.

I received this from NetGalley ages ago, saw some poor reviews and wasn’t quite so keen to read it. It’s languished on my iPad for ages. That wasn’t totally fair.
When I read the précis of this I was excited. Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts backstory. What could go wrong?
Unfortunately, for a story like this you have to empathise with the main character. Dinah is introduced to us and we should love her - left alone, lots of pressure, dead mother and emotionally abusive father - but she was simply not that endearing. She had a lovely relationship with her mad brother Charles, the hatter, but spent far too much time whining.
I felt this was a book I found entertaining enough as I was reading, but there is nothing very memorable about it. Disappointed.

Rating: 2.75/5 Stars
 I received a copy of this novel, in exchange for an honest review. Queen of Hearts is one of the novels I was approved for on Netgalley before I went on my blogging hiatus. After a year away I finally managed to pick up this book.
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 Queen of Hearts is a retelling mixed with the feel of an origin story. We follow Dinah, the heir to the throne of Wonderland as she manoeuvres through life with her coronation approaching. The novel is very focused on political intrigue and the plot itself moves very slowly. I liked Oakes' interpretation of Wonderland and her attempt at recreating the world as her own was really interesting.

 I really enjoyed the world building, especially how Oaks established her world through lore although I have some questions that relate to the representation of indigenous culture and I'd have liked to have seen more of Wonderland itself outside of the palace itself. We get some history in terms of Dinah's own past but not a lot of worldly context outside of that. We see that the royal family's existence is an integral part of Wonderland life but we never get told why. 
 I liked some of the characters, I liked Charles as a character though I have some concern around the ableist language that's used to describe him throughout the novel. Characters like the King and his adviser occasionally feel like cardboard cut outs, caricatures of antagonists which made the plot feel very predictable in parts. The King, so far is evil for the sake of evil which is boring and challenging and his adviser is slimy without context or history. I want to know why these characters are the way they are. We definitely don't get that in this novel.
 
I also haven't warmed to Dinah as a character yet; she is initially very bratty and spoilt and very little is done to improve her way of thinking. She is very selfish and self centred and is often very dull. Some of the twists were easy to figure out and it was frustrating to see Dinah glaze over and not think about or at the very least try to solve some of the riddles she's posed with. She's passive and everything seems to happen to her. She instigates nothing and as such that translates into a very flat protagonist.
 Some of the plot developments felt too convenient to be believable - made all the worse by Dinah's complacency. Some parts felt very driven by deus ex machina. A lot of the more interesting event don't even happen on the page, and  I wish Oakes had made Dinah more involved than just "feeling" something was wrong all the way through the novel. 

 It's also important to note that throughout the novel we near of the presence of an indigenous culture who live in the mountains. We don't learn much in this novel about the peoples but a lot of the indicators so far point towards some "savage indigenous" archetypes that just don't sit well with me. We also learn that Wonderlanders pushed the indigenous culture into the mountains after claiming the land for themselves so make of that what you will. 

 Overall, Oakes has done a pretty good job at making the world of Wonderland her own. I enjoyed her style of writing, and it was very easy to get through despite my problems with the novel itself. I just think that her characters need more depth, and her othering of marginalised groups often leads to a reliance on problematic ideas and approaches that could definitely use some revising.