This is a rather delightful little story, and the perfect way to end my reading year. I see that this is actually part of a series called "Once Upon a Time," which makes everything make 1000% more sense. I love fairy tale retellings, and this one is a doozy: Alice in Wonderland!

Maggie Durant is the family chameleon, and the family troubleshooter. When she learns that her cousin Merlin has died mysteriously - and that her Aunt Julia believes that he was murdered - she realizes that it's up to her to go investigate his death. Merlin was a magician in a traveling carnival called Wonderland, so Maggie shows up at its ramshackle temporary home in Kansas, takes an animal trainer's job, and starts her investigation into her cousin's death (he apparently fell into a well when the carnival was in Iowa).

Meanwhile, Gideon Hughes has been summoned to Wonderland upon the news that a very distant relative has suddenly died and left him in charge of the carnival. Gideon is an investment banker, and is frankly flummoxed by the idea of owning a traveling carnival. He demands to see the manager, and is immediately surprised - and intrigued - to find that 28-year-old Maggie is in charge of this lot. She looks like a fairy: small, blonde, impossibly fey features, and he's immediately intrigued. He can't make anything she says make logical sense, however, so they find themselves rather at a rather bemused crossroads. Eventually Gideon learns how to unbend enough to feel, rather than think, and the two put their heads together to discover who is a murderer hiding amongst the carny crew. They also fall in love over the course of about 2 days, thanks to a little meddling matchmaking from the improbably old Uncle Cyrus Fortune, who incidentally looks exactly like Col Sanders of KFC fame.

This is a very bizarre story, one you just have to roll with. If the author has her rights back, she could easily market this as fantasy romance these days. The only internal sense is the whimsical nonsense of the Lewis Carroll classic stories. There's even a Cheshire cat!

Bizarre, but unlike my last read, utterly delightful. I love the idea that there are more books in this series, all of which appear to be other fairy tale retellings. If this author can pull off freaking Alice in Wonderland, I can only imagine how she'd handle the more conventional tales! ( )