This is a Goodreads so as you may have gathered from previous reviews it. Will. Be. Messy.

“That is true,” Alice said. “I could never understand you.” She would never comprehend the need to hurt those who never hurt her, the need to hate for the sake of hating. She never wanted to rule over others in fear.

~This review will have a none spoiler section and then a spoiler filled section further on,(there will be a warning before the spoilers) enjoy!~

Honestly, I was quite underwhelmd with this book. It’s not a bad book but it’s not particularly great either. I didn’t know what I was quite expecting going into this, I was excited to read something abit different, a dark, twisted retelling of Alice in wonderland. I enjoyed parts of the book and I appreciated the writing (although at times I did think it was pretty basic) and was delightfully disturbed at parts but overall I guess I just wasn’t hooked.

I did enjoy the concept of the story being told after Alice went ‘down the rabbit hole’. It was really interesting to see how Henry executed it. The story was dark and creepy, which I think was done pretty well, at parts I was deeply unsettled (in a good way).

The ending though… didn’t do it for me it wasn’t an OMG moment, it isn’t something that’s going to stay with me, I’m not going to be thinking about it in a couple of months, it was pretty boring. There is a second book that continues this story and I’m not going to be fighting people at the book shop to get it.

If you are thinking about reading this book it’s an average reads with some enjoyable parts.
3/5 stars because it was decent. You may love it but I just wasn’t captivated. In my opinion, this book isn’t a necessity, you won’t die if you don’t read it but it’s by no means a bad book.

Trigger warning: this book doea include things such as rape, which may upset you as a reader, if so this book isn’t for you.

~Spoilers ahead~

So, we start off seeing Alice in a hospital for the mentally ill where she is confined to all in all a crappy room. She is basically being called crazy because after escaping from the rabbit (bad bad guy by the way) she can’t remember everything that has happened to her and when your daughter comes home spouting nonsense about an evil rabbit the first thing your mum would do would be to lock you up in a mental hospital, right?

Inside this mental hospital she becomes friends with Hatcher (a murderer but a nice guy really) next door. I honestly thought Hatcher was going to turn out to be evil but he stayed good to Alice throughout the book, thank God! I couldn’t have Hatcher killing Alice on me. I found their relationship abit odd, I didnt hate it but at times I was slightly confused.

Anyway, we see the hospital getting burned down and Hatcher and Alice’s escape.

Plot twist!

It’s not just them that escape but the Jabberwocky!! Who, they now need to go and defeat. Not only that but Hatcher is a seer and so is magically linked to the Jabberwocky and can sense when it’s close which sends Hatcher abit (a lot) loopy.
Hatcher in general is just abit (a lot) loopy and when you anger him he tends to ‘see red’ and kill you, spectacular I know!

The first important stop is Chesire’s house.
I found him a very intriguing character and wished there was more actual interactions with him, I found myself wanting to read more about him.

After some strange trickery from Chesire we then see Alice and Hatcher meet up with the caterpillar and my word the caterpillar’s home was a distubing scene. Basically a brothel.

Also a moment just for the Walrus. Vile. Vile. Vile
Stealing women and eating them WHILE he rapes them, (we later find out he was eating them to uncover whether they were a magcian or not as he was trying to steal their power because he was meant to buy Alice who, PLOT TWIST is a a magician as well as the Jabberwocky).

Back to the caterpillar, their conversation was interesting, we got to find out the story of Hatcher and how he actually worked for the rabbit in exchange for protection for his wife and later his dauhter against the big bad world.
That turns sour because their daughter, Jenny, is that stunning that the rabbit has Hattie, the mum, raped and murdered and the daughter stolen away to far far away. Just the usual thing you do to pretty girls.
Alice then being the bad ass she is gives the caterpillar the knife to the throat. Fully deserved!

Next stop the walrus. I wasn’t happy with these scenes. The walrus was bigged up throughout this book to be some big, scary character and in my opinion he went down way to easily. No tension. No suspense.
I get he wasn’t the main villian so perhaps not alot went into his storyline but he was a big obstacle in the way of their ultimate goal but it seemed like Alice and Hatcher had no issue of ridding themselves of the him.
It wasn’t even that their plan was made to be unrealistcally perfect or anything, I think it was just too short. I would have liked the walrus to put up abit more of a fight.

We then finally get to encounter the rabbit, who turns out to be some frail, old man because Alice took his eye out (when she previously went down the rabbit hole), taking his magic with him due to this magical knife she used (WHICH IS WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR TO DESTROY THE JABBERWOCKY ONLY ALICE THREW IT IN THE RIVER AGESSSSS AGO).
Not much to say about the Rabbit except he was abit weird. Again they seemed to roll right through him – onto the Jabberwocky.

I was sooooooo happy when Alice faced the Jabberwocky alone, Hatcher had been referred to as her protector throughout the book so seeing her able to take on this main villian alone was so pleasing to read.
However, again this villian was portrayed as an incredibly powerfull, ultimately evil type of baddy but Alice, who couldn’t even control her powers properly turned him into a BUTTERFLY. I don’t even know what to say. Amusing? Bizzare?

The ending really was quite predictable, similar to a fairy tale ending but it did set up for the second book nicely.
The adventure to Hatcher’s daughter, which I assume will be the main plotline in the sequel.
It felt like eveything was too much of a picture perfect ending and I needed something to grab me and make me want to pick up the next one and although this book had some good aspects unfortunately I just didn’t have that something that I needed.

A decent read but nothing spectacular.

I’m interested to see how other people found this book and if you picked the second book up what are your thoughts?A dencent book with some enjoyable disturbing scenes, a good read but not really a “go get it now” type of read.

Keep reading xoxo