Ever Alice

3.5

Book source ~ BBNYA

Alice is 15 now and her parents have tried everything to get her help for the stories she tells of her time in Wonderland. Nothing works so they reluctantly stick her in an asylum where she undergoes shitty “treatment” in an effort to cure her. When that doesn’t work the Dr. in charge rushes her off to a Dr. in Switzerland who has had “amazing” results with his breakthrough cutting edge controversial treatment. Yeah, it’s not specifically stated, but we all know what he’s going to do to Alice. Before it happens though the White Rabbit pulls her back to Wonderland. He and his resistance pals need her help in killing the Queen of Hearts. Oh, dear. Do you think she can?

Man, the mentally ill have been show more mistreated for so long that it’s just unreal to read about it. And this experimental procedure they want to do to Alice is the absolute worst. Ugh. No wonder she retreated back to Wonderland. Or is Wonderland real, too? Hmmmm… This story reminds me a lot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode titled: Normal Again (S6:E17). It totally fucks with my mind.

This story is confusing, silly, heart breaking, and uplifting all at the same time. It’s been over four decades since I read Alice in Wonderland so I only have the vaguest of memories to compare to this retelling. I do enjoy getting more than just Alice’s POV and finding out more about the Queen of Hearts and Wonderland with all the Houses, politics, and scheming that surrounds them all. If you’re a fan of Alice in Wonderland then I think this is a story you won’t want to miss. show less

I received this book for free as part of an Instagram book review tour.

This was a really fun retelling! The book takes place years after the original, when Alice is 15 and she once again follows the white rabbit back to Wonderland. I just have to put it out there that Alice in Wonderland is one of my all time favorite stories so I was exceptionally eager to read this.

At first I didn’t quite know if I would like this but once Alice went back to Wonderland I was hooked. I just had to keep reading to find out what happens to Alice and the fate of Wonderland.

All your favorite characters are back such as the Queen of Hearts, the white rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat. There are some new characters too, like Thomas, the Queen show more of Hearts’ son.

I really liked that the book was told from both Alice and the Queen of Hearts’ perspective. Having the queen’s point of view was very enlightening. It gave her character more complexity and dimension.

I found that the style and tone of the book was a good continuation of the original. Obviously no one can compare to Lewis Carroll, but the author did a wonderful job in keeping with the spirit of the original while offering her own unique twist.

The ending was amazing. I don’t want to give it away but I think it was perfect for this mad tale.

Overall, I really enjoyed this Alice retelling. If you love Alice in Wonderland, give this book a try! show less

When Alice came back from Wonderland, her tales of White Rabbits, Mad Hatters, and insane queens landed her in an asylum. She's 15 years old now and keeps trying to explain to her parents and anyone else who will listen that her stories are TRUE and that she is not insane. But nobody will listen. The doctors want to try an experimental treatment on her, but instead she escapes, returning to Wonderland. But, Wonderland isn't much better than the real world....the queen is still quite insane. Alice didn't expect to be asked to kill her.

This is an interesting sequel to Alice in Wonderland. I liked it for the most part, except for the very end. I love Lewis Carroll's original so I happily read this re-imagining. The story is well-written show more and very interesting. I couldn't put it down! In the end, I just found it a bit too dark and depressing. Alice being treated like she is mentally ill was just a bit much for me.

Interesting story. Awesome new vision for a sequel. But it does touch on some dark and disturbing themes. Public execution. Mental illness. Extreme medical procedures.

I would definitely read more by this author. Ever Alice is her first book.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Red Rogue Press via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

I was pretty excited to read this book as I am a big fan of Alice in Wonderland and I always love seeing the different ways that people interrupt and re-imagine this classic.

This re-imagining, or rather continuation, takes place years after the original story. The story starts with 15 year old Alice living in a asylum, her family have given up on her “growing out of” telling stories about her adventure’s in Wonderland and so have sent her away to an asylum after being promised that Alice could be “cured”. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a story if she was.

In a final attempt to cure Alice show more she travels to Switzerland, to Prefargier Asylum, where Dr Burckhardt is offering an experimental procedure that promises to remove all thoughts of Wonderland from Alice’s head. Moments before the procedure is about to begin, Alice escapes from the asylum to Wonderland with the White Rabbit’s help. The only catch is that he wants her to kill the Queen.

I really enjoyed this retelling. I especially liked the nonsensical phrases throughout the book. They really reminded me of the source material. Which I loved.

Also the way that it was written in third person dual point of view was really interesting. As it offered both Alice’s view of events alongside the Queen’s. Giving two different takes on the story and offering two unique sides to Ever Alice‘s plot.

Many of the characters from the source material appear in Ever Alice accompanied by a new cast of characters. Wonderland has changed since Alice was last there, the Queen having gotten worse. Beheading anyone she believes to be a traitor, or does something to her disliking. I felt like the Queen, Rosamund, was one of the stronger characters in this story. She had a very strong characterisation, more so than many of the other characters. What I mean by this is that I felt that Rosamund’s character was the most consistent in her thoughts and actions. As she believed wholeheartedly that her actions where completely justifiably. Only very briefly did her belief waver, and often only for a short amount of time before she convinced herself of her own “brilliance”. Which is seen in her chapters in the book.

Alice’s character, however, was more unsure. She is dragged into the mess that is Wonderland and asked to kill the Queen. Something which she does not want to do, she does not want to become a murderer even if the Queen wants her beheaded. Alice is thrown into the thick of it when she is initiated into an organisation to kill the Queen and then put into place as a lady-in-waiting thanks to Ralph, the White Rabbit, one of the Queen’s three advisers.

Alice is the character that changes the most. Starting as a quiet-ish girl unsure of herself after her time in the asylum that grows into a more confident and self realised individual. Her decisions and mindset changes a number of times throughout the story. From not wanting to travel back to Wonderland and wanting to be cured, to changing her mind to go with the White Rabbit at the last moment. From not wanting to kill the Queen to wanting to kill the Queen.

Unlike Alice in Wonderland, Ever Alice feels less dreamlike and more like reality. There is a clear and concise development of plot and events, new and wonderful things do not just appear and dazzle or awe Alice like in her original time in Wonderland. Possibly due to the fact that she is older and spends more time in Wonderland, many of the peculiarities of Wonderland become seemingly normal.

As I mentioned before I liked the throwbacks to Alice in Wonderland; I liked that such things as the “drink me” potion to make one small, the Queen’s love of beheading people, the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the croquet game to name a few. But what I really liked was that Ramsay took a lot of these elements and expanded on them. As well as create new oddities, such as pats of butter in “tea” that isn’t real tea and a game of skittles with penguins and armadillos.

There were a few things that I didn’t like about this book. I wasn’t 100% happy with the ending, but I did appreciate the mirroring the ending in Alice in Wonderland in Ever Alice. As well as showing what happened after Alice’s return to Wonderland in Switzerland and what had happened to her family. I personally am not a huge fans of these sort of endings in general. But I understand why this part of the ending made sense to include.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book. I thought was a really great and fun re-imagining of Wonderland and a very interesting continuation of Alice in Wonderland.

#EverAlice #NetGalley show less

I love Alice in Wonderland retellings and this one felt much closer in aesthetic to the original! I liked getting to read from the Queen of Hearts perspective as she was much more interesting than Alice. That ending took me by surprise, maybe not completely in a good way. 3.5/ 5 stars! I enjoyed reading the book but the ending wasn’t my jam and Alice was too passive. Still worth the read if you love Wonderland stories!

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley and Red Rogue Press in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

By now, I think you all know that when there’s an Alice in Wonderland retelling, it’s going immediately on my TBR. I don’t discriminate – you say “Alice” and I say “Yes, please!”

Ever Alice is another Wonderland retelling, with POVs from both Alice and Rosamund, the Queen of Hearts. It tells the story of Alice as she returns to Wonderland to help depose of the mad queen, but most of the story is from Rosamund’s POV as paranoia completely consumes her. One of the first things mentioned in the summary for this book is that Alice is in an show more asylum and after things like Splintered, that raised a lot of red flags for me, so I want to go through it.

While I wouldn’t say that the asylum handling is shiny and sparkling and really promotes getting assistance for mental health concerns, Ramsay handles it very well. Surprisingly well. I was ready to tear this apart, and it’s a relief I don’t have to. Each chapter heading has the character, a date, and a location, so we know that this is set in the late 1800s. In her choice of doctors, Ramsay has done real historical research which SO impressed me. There’s still that edge of a stereotypical asylum, but that’s all it is… an edge. I’ve seen stories set in the present day do a less careful, calculated job with this kind of setting, so I really think H. J. Ramsay has earned some kudos here.

Wonderland certainly has the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s original, but it’s all a bit… much. A lot of the langue used is topsy turvy, with things often being turned to their opposite meanings. I think she took this from “unbirthday” because we have things like “unimportant” meaning “of utmost importance” and the such. Instead of providing an immersive experience, this fell flat and simply annoyed me. There were a lot of places in the language where I felt like she was delving a bit too deep into “stuff and nonsense” and we lost the trail of things. And while I understand that Carroll never intended a plot, children’s books are often like that. This is somewhere between YA and NA and it needs a bit more solid of a structure.

The plot? Well, the plot’s all over the place. The main plot is that there’s a conspiracy against the Queen of Hearts. As this is a fiction she’s been fed by her advisers since taking the throne, the Queen is already in a high state of paranoia. If it was just a plot to kill the Queen, I think that would be enough. However, there’s the sub-plot of the prince’s romance, and of about three different coups, and Sabrina’s condition, and Alice’s predicament back home. There are way too many things going on, and not enough attention is paid to any of them. They all feel like flights of fancy, like the author wanted to shove all her ideas into Ever Alice rather than write a series.

Because of the chaos of Ramsay’s Wonderland, and because of the scattered pieces of plots, I never really felt like I could get immersed into the book, which impacted my experience. And I think that all these things affected the way the characters developed in the story, because they’re all very shallow and there’s a lot of dialogue and not a lot of real introspection. None of the characters grow or evolve, and it’s difficult to be invested in their adventures.

Generally speaking, Ever Alice isn’t the best Alice in Wonderland retelling I’ve read… but it’s also not the worst. Despite all my grumbling about plot and characters, it’s a quick books to read, and Ramsay really does seem to capture some of the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s original stories. Surprisingly, very few retellings seem to do that, instead borrowing Wonderland for their own purposes instead of paying it back. So she gets brownie points for that. I think Alice fans should give this one a go and see what they think! show less

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

Well not too much to say here besides the fact I didn't enjoy reading this one. I am always down for a fresh take on a retelling of a classic fairy tale, but Ramsay didn't do a good job of developing Alice or the Queen of Hearts. The flow of the book was not very good and I thought the setting of Wonderland could have been done up a lot more than it was. The ending also was a head scratcher to me.

"Ever Alice" follows a 15 year old Alice who has been packed away in an asylum by her parents. Though Alice keeps insisting that Wonderland and the White Rabbit are real, her family doesn't believe her. Now that she's older she still hopes she will be show more allowed to return home to celebrate her sister's upcoming marriage. However, things change again for her when she is taken to a new place that is dangerous to her. And when the White Rabbit shows again, Alice has a chance to return to Wonderland or be lost forever.

Ramsay decides to focus on not just a 15 year old Alice, but an older Queen of Hearts too. Honestly that ends up being a mistake. The writing between the two characters could not be more dissimilar. I ended up skimming a lot of the Queen of Hearts scenes because it was so repetitive. She's a mess and there's a lot of conspiracies surrounding her that I did not care one iota about. And I have to say that it doesn't get better when we switch to Alice's POV. This Alice is not that smart, but also sits around jealous because she has fallen for the Queen of Hearts son Thomas and wants him to pay attention to her. She's freaking 15 and hasn't even been around boys it would seem and her obsessing about Thomas and her "mission" just didn't get together very well.

Other familiar characters from Wonderland show up her, the Cheshire cat, The White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, etc. and none of them shone. There is a plot line about the Queen of Hearts and why Alice is rescued by the White Rabbit that made zero sense. And it just felt like Ramsay wanted to mix things up a bit and make this book more similar to the Alice in Wonderland movies directed by Tim Burton. But with an even more shallow look at characters.
The flow was not that good. I think jumping back and forth between Alice and the Queen of Hearts wasn't a good idea. When Ramsay gets to the ending though is when things take an even more strange turn. One wonders if the author is hoping to turn this into a duology or what.

The setting of Wonderland was flat to me. I just finished "A Blade so Black" and I had the same issues while reading this book that I did while reading that. This book reads as if the author has just a low level knowledge of the Lewis Carroll works and doesn't do anything new with them and or doesn't expand on them in different ways. Besides people talking in an exhausting way, there's not that much there with Wonderland.

The ending was a letdown and I was just glad to put this book down in the end. show less