Review: Alice Takes Back Wonderland by David D. Hammons

*I was provided with an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my rating or my review in the slightest. All thoughts expressed in this review is unbiased and my own.*

 

Title: Alice Takes Back Wonderland
Author: David D. Hammons
My rating: 4.5 hearts
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Publication date: September 28th 2015
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Synopsis: After ten years of being told she can't tell the difference between real life and a fairy tale, Alice finally stops believing in Wonderland. So when the White Rabbit shows up at her house, Alice thinks she's going crazy.

Only when the White Rabbit kicks her down the rabbit hole does Alice realize that the magical land she visited as a child is real.

But all is not well in Wonderland.

The Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland and is systematically dismantling all that makes it wonderful. Plain is replacing wondrous, logical is replacing magical, and reason is destroying madness. Alice decides she must help the Mad Hatter and all those fighting to keep Wonderland wonderful.

But how can she face such danger when she is just a girl?

Alice must journey across the stars to unite an army. She discovers that fairy tales are real in the magical world beyond the rabbit hole. But they are not the fairy tales she knows.

Fairy tales have dangers and adventures of their own, and Alice must overcome the trials of these old stories if she wants to unite the lands against Ace.

With the help of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White and heroes old and new, Alice may have the strength to take back Wonderland. (synopsis from Goodreads)

My thoughts: Let’s get one thing straight. I absolutely love Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. Which means, every time I find a new retelling, I have to read it. Actually, I’ll read any retelling, as long as it sounds good. I love retellings.

   So when I found this, naturally, I was really happy. I couldn’t wait to start reading it, and at first, it was just as good as I’d hoped it’d be. Actually, it was throughout most of it, it was awesome. I loved that it was not only a retelling of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, but a lot of different stories, like Peter Pan, Snow White, and a whole bunch of others, except they were very different. For example, Snow White and the seven dwarves were criminals.

   I don’t know what I expected it to be like, but I was very happily surprised. I liked that it was a little dark, but not too much, and that the stories existed in the “real” world, but they didn’t get it completely right. Every time Alice and her new friends encountered a new story, she was confused and shocked, as was I. When I thought I couldn’t be more surprised, something happened, and I was yet again surprised.

   It kept a pretty fast pace throughout the whole book, and I got through the first 80% in no time. At 80%, though, something happened. I’m not sure what exactly, but the last 20% took longer time to read than the rest of the book combined. I don’t know why the end didn’t keep my attention the way the rest of the book did.

   What I loved the most about this book was that it wasn’t predictable. Retellings rarely surprise me, because they keep too much of the original story, but this just kept the base structure, barely that. It was a story of its own, and it kept surprising me.

   Another thing I loved was the romance. Often in YA fantasy and romance novels, the romance gets the main focus, and there is less focus on the plot, but in this book, the plot gets the main focus, and that made me love it even more.

   To sum it up, I loved this book. It was one of the best retellings I’ve read, possibly the best. The only thing that I didn’t love was the last 20%, that didn’t manage to keep my interesting alive quite as well as the rest of the book. But the ending was still surprising, just like the rest of the book. So, if you haven’t read it yet, you should, especially if you like retellings.