Heartless by Marissa Meyer

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Publication date: 2016
Publisher: A Feiwel and Friends Book
Pages: 449
My rating: 4 stars
Ages: 13+

Despite being the daughter of a marquess, Catherine only wants to be a baker. Her tarts are known throughout Hearts, and have even earned her the attention of the King of Hearts. However, it's the joker who has caught her eye, and who shows her a world completely different from the Hearts she has known.

I love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I feel that many people don't understand it's importance in literary history, or pass it off as some kind of drug-induced dream (my opinions of this theory are strong and could fill another post on its own). I think that Meyer has the same kind of love and admiration for Carroll's most popular work, because it showed in Heartless.

The kingdom of Hearts is just as strange as we see in Wonderland, with caterpillars and penguins who talk and work, but seen through the eyes of Catherine, who is from Hearts, it is all completely normal. Which is a great way to treat it, and I was pleased to find everything also seemed normal to me. I like how straight from the start, I could pick out familiar characters and see how they fit into the story I already knew.

Catherine is presented as a sympathetic character, with strengths and faults, who experiences things that turns her into a character we are all familiar.

A great one-off story from an author who wrote a series I love.

No language or sex.

*I do not receive compensation from Amazon.

My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding

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Publication date: 2012
Publisher: Penquin
Pages: 318
My rating: 3.5 stars
Ages: 16+

In this memoir of an "English Treasure," Balding discusses what it was like growing up the daughter of a champion race horse trainer. As the daughter she was seen as less than her brother, but during her time in the amateur racing circuit, she proves to everyone just what a woman can achieve. Balding's storytelling is quintessentially British, showcasing the stereotype that Brits only show affection to dogs and horses.

I was first drawn to My Animals when I saw an interview with Balding in which she discussed this book. Being American, I had never heard of Balding, nor did I know much of anything about racing (other than what I had picked up from movies such as National Velvet and Seabiscuit). But I wanted to read her book because it seemed so odd to me that the Queen Mum would eat breakfast with the family of the man who trains her horses.

For the most part, Balding explains the racing terms in such a way that even someone like me can understand. But it's really more than racing--I would say that the racing is actually a secondary part of My Animals. I think it's more about growing up thinking that you need to be a certain way to get recognition from your family, and that you need to meet certain expectations. I like the uniqueness of having the chronology given through which dogs where in her life or which horse she was riding, though I felt a little thrown about in some of her chapters as she would go forward or backward in time and then return to whatever event she was initially talking about. They were all related, it just seemed abrupt.

This is a good read for older teens and up, especially those who like horses.

*I am not compensated by Amazon.