#FRC2014 Review: The Wonder by Colleen Oakes

Title: The Wonder
Author:  Colleen Oakes
Format: Ebook
Publisher: SparksPress
Publish Date: September 23, 2014
Source: Fall Reading Challenge

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "An Exiled Princess.
An Ancient Tribe.
A Dangerous Stranger with Unknown Loyalties.

Dinah, the former Princess of Wonderland Palace, has been chased into the wilds of Wonderland after the brutal murder of her brother and the ruin of her impending crown. Now, as her half-sister Vittiore sits on the throne beside her Father, the brutal King of Hearts, Dinah finds herself alone in the forbidding Twisted Wood with only Morte, a homicidal beast, for company.

Hunted by the King and his army of Cards, Dinah struggles to evade those who long for her head, including Cheshire, the King’s clever advisor, who is slowly tightening his grasp around her. Spurred on by her rising terror, the former Princess finds herself at the center of a web of conspiracy reaching far beyond the Palace and deep into the mysterious Yurkei mountain tribes.
Even with the balance of an entire Kingdom at stake, Dinah knows something that her allies and enemies do not: that the most dangerous conflict of all has already begun as she battles the enticing rage that beckons her ever closer as love slips further from her grasp.

The second book in the bestselling and award-winning Queen of Hearts Saga, The Wonder takes readers back to the most wondrous and curious places in Wonderland, and continues this darkly addictive tale featuring one of the most infamous villains of all time.

But be warned…not every fairy tale has a happy ending.
This is the story of a princess who became a villain."

My Two Cents:

"The Crown" and "The Wonder" are the first two books in Colleen Oakes' great Queen of Hearts saga. I'll be reviewing both of these books together so that you can see how both of the stories build on each other. As you may have guessed from the title of the series, this book is based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which has their designation of being one of my very favorite stories. When the first book opens we meet Dinah, who will be the future queen of hearts in the Alice in Wonderland stories. When we first meet her, she is a teenager who is just starting to figure out what her royal duties are going to look like. Oakes draws us into a pretty dark Wonderland where everyone that seems to be on your team is not really on your team. The second book is a little more action oriented than the first book. In the second book, Dinah is really growing into her own and we get to see the beginnings of the character that she turns into the Alice in Wonderland books.

I think that retellings and prequels to really famous stories can be really difficult to write so I think the author had a very ambitious goal with both of these books. I'm happy to report that she succeeds and stays true to the Alice in Wonderland stories and she also succeeds in making these books wholly her own as well. What I really liked about these books is that they stay true to the sorts of twist and turns that Carroll has in the original stories. I also liked that Oakes was able to take a character like the queen of hearts and show us how she almost became a sympathetic character. This isn't to say that we don't see Carroll's queen of hearts in Dinah but we do get to see a different side of her in this book and we also get to understand why things ended up the way that they ended up and the Alice in Wonderland books.

At first I wasn't really sure about how I was going to like Dinah as a character but Oakes is able to show us exactly what she's contending with and it definitely makes it a little bit easier to understand her character. No, she's not exactly a nice character but we understand where she is coming from.

At the end of the first book I was definitely ready to read more so I was happy to start the second book right away! The first book definitely feels more like a sort of setting up of the story. We get to meet a lot of the different characters in this scene is set for a lot of the plot points in the second book. That being said, I think that both books stand fairly nicely on their own but you'll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you read both of them. Overall, if you're a fan of the Alice in Wonderland stories and you ever wondered about the red Queen, Oakes has a great story for you.

 


My Two Cents:

"The Crown" and "The Wonder" are the first two books in Colleen Oakes' great Queen of Hearts saga. I'll be reviewing both of these books together so that you can see how both of the stories build on each other. As you may have guessed from the title of the series, this book is based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which has their designation of being one of my very favorite stories. When the first book opens we meet Dinah, who will be the future queen of hearts in the Alice in Wonderland stories. When we first meet her, she is a teenager who is just starting to figure out what her royal duties are going to look like. Oakes draws us into a pretty dark Wonderland where everyone that seems to be on your team is not really on your team. The second book is a little more action oriented than the first book. In the second book, Dinah is really growing into her own and we get to see the beginnings of the character that she turns into the Alice in Wonderland books.

I think that retellings and prequels to really famous stories can be really difficult to write so I think the author had a very ambitious goal with both of these books. I'm happy to report that she succeeds and stays true to the Alice in Wonderland stories and she also succeeds in making these books wholly her own as well. What I really liked about these books is that they stay true to the sorts of twist and turns that Carroll has in the original stories. I also liked that Oakes was able to take a character like the queen of hearts and show us how she almost became a sympathetic character. This isn't to say that we don't see Carroll's queen of hearts in Dinah but we do get to see a different side of her in this book and we also get to understand why things ended up the way that they ended up and the Alice in Wonderland books.

At first I wasn't really sure about how I was going to like Dinah as a character but Oakes is able to show us exactly what she's contending with and it definitely makes it a little bit easier to understand her character. No, she's not exactly a nice character but we understand where she is coming from.

At the end of the first book I was definitely ready to read more so I was happy to start the second book right away! The first book definitely feels more like a sort of setting up of the story. We get to meet a lot of the different characters in this scene is set for a lot of the plot points in the second book. That being said, I think that both books stand fairly nicely on their own but you'll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you read both of them. Overall, if you're a fan of the Alice in Wonderland stories and you ever wondered about the red Queen, Oakes has a great story for you.