portakkalsuyu 's review for:

Alice by Christina Henry

4.25

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This is hard.. I really LOVED the idea and setting of this book as I’m a huge fan of horror and retellings. Alice in Wonderland is a classic and perfect base for horror, and I genuinely loved the writing. It was disturbing too, very sad how women aren’t even safe from men in books, a bit too realistic imo 💔

Anyway.. now my issue with this is following: it was too easy. I had a great time reading, and I have the second book alr lying in front of me, but the way all of those bad evil men were defeated so easily, and how Alice can simply

wish the world to change

is giving her too much power and an easy way out, it was underwhelming and felt lazy. But I’m conflicted because it didn’t really bother me that much as the entire thing felt like a nostalgic (yet twisted and disturbing) fairytale movie, so it makes sense that it gets resolved the way it did. I’m really curious to see what happens in the second and third book and I will keep reading. But yea. Idk I wish there would've been more challenges for the characters .. esp the end was kinda funny but also very "that‘s it? u can’t be serious“ LOL

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence