Title: Ever Alice

Author: H.J. Ramsay

Publication Date: August 1, 2019

Genre: Fantasy

Number of Pages: 347

Summary: From Goodreads: 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: I received this book to read and review as part of the BBNYA 2020 tours organised by the @The_WriteReads tours team in exchange for an honest review. If you want some more information about BBNYA, keep reading because I have some information about how you can be part of the 2021 BBNYA competition after my review!

Ever Alice is a dark and twisty tale that takes place a few years after Alice’s first adventures in Wonderland. It’s full of scandal, intrigue, lies, and deception, with a tiny bit of love thrown in for good measure. If you’re a fan of Alice in Wonderland, this book needs to be up next on your TBR because you will not be disappointed.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up this book because, on the one hand, it sounded fantastic, but on the other hand, I don’t care for Alice in Wonderland. Fortunately, this book had enough twists and turns to keep me hooked until the end, and I was not disappointed. It was full of familiar faces from Alice in Wonderland and some new characters to give us a deeper look into the Queen of Heart’s court and Wonderland as a whole.

My favourite thing about this book was the Queen of Hearts, or as she’s known in his book, Rosamund. I’ve always The Queen of Hearts is usually one of the first characters to pop into my head when I have to list villains, and this book was a deep dive into her character. Rosamund is vain and paranoid. She’s convinced that there’s a traitor, and she’ll behead whoever she has to figure out who it is. Throughout the book, you can see her spiralling downwards as she becomes convinced that more and more people are against her.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Alice in this book, but to be fair, I’ve never been much of a fan of Alice. I thought that Alice was a bit of a pushover and that she didn’t have a lot of original thoughts. To be fair, though, Alice returned to Wonderland to help carry out a dark and sinister plot, and that doesn’t leave much room for original thought.

On another note, I did not like the asylum aspect of this book. It doesn’t surprise me that Alice was sent to an asylum after her first adventures in Wonderland, but I wasn’t a fan of it. The parts where Alice was in the asylum made me feel anxious, and in the future, I’m going to avoid books that feature asylums for my mental health.

Another thing that I liked about this book was getting a deeper look at Wonderland. Wonderland is a fascinating setting, and I enjoyed exploring it more and learning more about it. This book is full of the topsy turvy language that you would expect to find in Wonderland, and it takes a little while to get used to. This book is darker than I expected, so I don’t think whimsical is the right word to describe Wonderland, but it’s still strange and lopsided.

Overall, this wasn’t my favourite book because I’m generally not a fan of Alice in Wonderland. However, I plan on screaming about this book for a long time because I know a lot of people who love Alice and Wonderland, and I think they need this book in their lives ASAP.

Rating: 3.5 Stars!

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