The opening has so far made me really crave lemon tarts. 
 I really did enjoy this book. I found myself not wanting to read it though because I knew how it would end. Villain origin stories are just hard to read. Is this why people disliked Star Wars ep 1-3 so much? In any case, I thought the writing was excellent and I thought the author did a great job of staying true to Wonderland. It certainly is a very plausible and heartbreakingly possible origin story for the Red Queen. I have read a couple other "Wonderland" spin off novels and for me, this was the one that stayed closest to the tone of the origin books. 
 I found it interesting that at the end of the novel she writes that the inspiration for this book came from the book Wicked and her wanting Gregory Maguire to write a Wonderland novel. I believe he took a stab at it with After Alice and failed miserably.