Review: Scatterheart by Lili Wilkinson

Series: Standalone
Publisher: Black Dog Books
Source: Purchased
Goodreads//Amazon                                                                     

“Once upon a time, there was a girl called Scatterheart, who was selfish and vain, with a heart as fickle as the changing winds...” Hannah Cheshire is rich and spoilt. She has servants to wait on her hand and foot — and Thomas, a passionate young tutor who fills her head with stories. Then one day her father disappears, and she is left to fend for herself. Alone and penniless, she is sentenced to transportation for a crime she didn't commit. Once Hannah considered Thomas beneath her: a servant, a commoner. Now she thinks of him more and more. But will she ever see him again? One girl‘s adventure to find happiness becomes a fairytale within a fairytale. A romantic story of power and love.

Scatterheart was an interesting read, one of the books that I actually learnt a bit from.  Although it's not the best historical fiction book I've ever read, I was able to get through it pretty quickly.  I need to comment that Hannah, the main character, annoyed me so much.  Yes, I understand that you're daddy's girl and you don't need to know what he does as long as he loves you and you have wonderful gifts each time and you have maids to take care of you and private teachers and so on so forth...  Would you seriously to be so dumb as to make mistakes one after another and not learn from them?  No, it looks like she's going to stay stubborn to the end and not believe that her precious father would ever do anything wrong.  Her princess-like attitude annoyed me especially because she just cannot change even when it was obvious.  I guess that plays a large part in the story but even so, I got a bit ticked off reading through these events again and again to see failure.

I really enjoyed reading Scatterheart, but one thing that I think could have been improved was the ending.  That's probably one of the important things that needed to be right in order to finish off the book with a good feeling, and I didn't see that.  It felt a bit rushed, and it wasn't what I would have expected.  I'm not saying it was horrible, but it just didn't work to finish off nicely.

I did really like the overall story line, and the characters were very unique and each stood out a lot.  That was good because their strong personalities really shaped the book as a whole and it made things a lot more interesting and intriguing.    The characters would really clash with each other at first so it was fun to see their relationships grow and expand.  Some relationships even take an unexpected twist, which was good since it kept me flipping the pages.

Lili Wilkinson has done a good job with Scatterheart if not for the little mistakes here and there.  If you enjoy reading historical fiction or want to find out about the convicts to Australia then you should read it.  The relationships are also quite complex so I really enjoyed watching them grow and wilt *hint*.  Four out of five stars.

~Alvie~