Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsay

Read Dates: September 18, 2021 – September 21, 2021
Date Published: August 1, 2019
Source: ebook

Goodreads — Amazon

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.

**Thank you to H.J. Ramsay and Red Rogue Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

Hi. So uhh… as you can see, I finished this book a couple of weeks ago… I’ve honestly been putting off writing this review because I HATE writing reviews on books I didn’t like. But I felt like I needed to be true to the reason I started this blog in the first place and true to the people that read my reviews and let y’all know… I didn’t like this one.

I love retellings. If you follow my blog posts you know I am a serious SUCKER for a retelling. So when I saw this one, I got excited! An Alice in Wonderland retelling where Alice is a psych patient? That sounded AMAZING to me. But it was nothing I hoped. Nothing I expected. I was bored. I wanted to like it! I really did! I really tried to love the story but I was so, so incredibly bored.

When I think “Alice in Wonderland” I think silly, out of the blue, unexpected, straight up NONSENSE. But that’s not what happened.

This book was full of characters I couldn’t connect with. I didn’t feel anything for a single character. There were moments in the book that should have made me gasp and my heart should have ached but it didn’t. It just didn’t. Because I couldn’t have cared less about any of the characters in this book.

Alice annoyed me most of the way through. She wasn’t a constant character. She didn’t stick to one personality. She cycled through many. Which I guess would be appropriate since she’s a psych patient and that’s sort of the point but it made the entire story feel sloppy and forced. She couldn’t do a single thing unless someone told her to do it and it was incredibly frustrating.

Speaking of forced… the elements of Wonderland and some of the happenings felt forced. It felt like the author was trying to shove every well-known element of Wonderland into this story in a new way that we hadn’t seen but it didn’t work for me because, again, it felt forced.

The prince. Let’s talk about the Prince of Wonderland. That whole storyline didn’t make a lick of sense either. I couldn’t connect with him and I couldn’t bring myself to care what he was doing and with whom. His presence wasn’t even needed in this story. I feel like he was just added for a “romance” element that the book could have done without.

Now, I suppose these things would make sense and they would sort of go with the ending of the story, which I saw coming unfortunately, but when I read an Alice in Wonderland retelling, I want to feel the wonder. I want to be dazzled and I want to hear all the silly fast-paced Wonderland banter. Sometimes we would get tiny snippets of that classic Wonderland but then suddenly the book would shift back and it didn’t feel like we were in Wonderland at all. It felt like a regular story in a regular world full of regular characters where regular things happened and nothing out of the ordinary ever occurred.

I’m just sad and disappointed. Maybe it’s my own fault. Maybe I went into this book with my expectations too high and my excitement level a little through the roof. However, I’ve sat on thoughts of this book for weeks and I still can’t get past how utterly plain it was. No story about Wonderland should be so plain. It should stick with you. It should have you recalling moments and laughing at how silly it was. The parts of the story that were meant to be climaxes just continued to feel like the rest of the story. It didn’t feel like anything exciting was happening. I never felt I needed to hold my breath for what was to come because the story held the same monotonous tone the entire way through. This story was forgettable and I’m just really disappointed.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I would never straight up tell someone to not read this book. I’ve seen rave reviews on this book. Lots of them. This book has won awards and has come incredibly close to winning others. It’s been a finalist in many “best book” categories. So if you came here to read this review because this book sounded interesting to you and you thought you might like it, I implore you, go read it! Chances are you’ll think differently than me. Everyone perceives differently. Don’t let my sad review deter you.

Just be warned that there are no happy endings in this book. Which is usually a plus for me, but this time it wasn’t. Things aren’t going to work out the way you want them to in ANY situation. That’s all I’ll say to avoid spoilers but… yea. Go see for yourself if you feel so inclined.

✌💛