My Rating ~ Three Stars

RELEASED: 1 August 2019

Publisher: Red Rogue Press

Format: E-ARC

Pages: 347

Source: Received from Netgalley

Blurb

Alice’s stories of Wonderland did more than raise a few eyebrows—it landed her in an asylum. Now at 15 years of age, she’s willing to do anything to leave, which includes agreeing to an experimental procedure. When Alice decides at the last minute not to go through with it, she escapes with the White Rabbit to Wonderland and trades one mad house for another: the court of the Queen of Hearts. Only this time, she is under orders to take out the Queen. When love, scandal, and intrigue begin to muddle her mission, Alice finds herself on the wrong side of the chopping block.

Review

Thankyou to Red Rogue Press for providing me with a copy of Ever Alice, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Alice’s parents have left her in an asylum after her stories of Wonderland have them quite sure she’s mad. She’ll do anything to go home, so when her doctor suggests taking Alice to another facility for an experimental treatment to help her, she agrees. Upon arriving at the ‘hospital’, Alice becomes suspicious and afraid of the procedure, and in her panic, escapes back to Wonderland with the White Rabbit. 🐇

There she discovers the rabbit is part of an ‘above-ground’ movement to get rid of the Queen of Hearts once and for all. With Alice tasked with killing her, before too many heads can roll, she needs to navigate the bizarre ways of Wonderland and decide who she can really trust, and that includes the handsome Prince of Hearts.

This is a book I’m finding a little hard to rate – it was interesting and it kept the same ‘completely mad’ feeling as the original Alice in Wonderland tale, but at the same time, it didn’t quite capture me as much as I thought it would. It was a fun read and I appreciated that it maintained the quirkiness we all know and love of Wonderland’s characters, but it felt like Ever Alice relied too heavily on our prior knowledge of the original Wonderland, and gave us very little world building. There also seemed to be so many characters, that we didn’t really get enough information about any of them. It felt a little like they mostly just flitted in and out of the story. I do have to say I absolutely loved the ending though!

I feel like, although I love the idea of Alice in Wonderland, and all its characters, maybe if I went back and read the original story today I’d not be quite as enamoured with the kookiness of it. That probably affected my views towards this particular book, so if you still adore the original Alice stories, you could fall in love with this one!