Book Review | Alice #AlwaysProtectYourQueen

“Always protect your queen.”

Ever since the outbreak of the Plague, life hasn’t been easy, and for seventeen-year-old Alice Carroll, it just got worse. Her sister, Dinah, has contracted the ‘un-deadly’ Momerath Virus and without a cure, will soon be worse than dead. She’ll be momerath.

Alice must leave the safety of the Sector and venture into Momerath Territory to find the antidote – if it exists. Chasing a rumor about a mysterious doctor with the cure, Alice falls down the rabbit hole into Wanderland, where ravenous momerath aren’t the only danger lurking.

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There’s always a bit of apprehension when you agree to read a book by someone who you have interacted with in the blogging community, no matter how good it sounds there’s always that little voice in the back of your head that says but what if you hate it…

So when the lovely JM Sullivan was looking for people to read her debut I was all for it, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, with that lovely cover, I couldn’t wait, but I was a bit nervous…

Now I know it’s only May but it’s pretty safe to say that I think Alice is one of my top books in 2017.

I loved it!

For my first venture into retellings, I stumbled onto a winner, I love Alice in Wonderland the C.S.Lewis book and of course, the Disney movies and I’m sure I’ve seen some TV adaptations as well, so I was looking forward to seeing what direction this book was going to take.

I have to say I was really surprised by it, it merges the classic characters with the popular genre of the zombie apocalypse and it’s a match made in heaven. I wish I could give some comparison that would do it justice so you would know how amazing it is but I feel they all fell a little short.

When I realized that it had this zombie element in the momerath virus it did cross my mind that it might fall into patterns that are too similar to other books/shows/films, but I’m happy to say that whilst it had all the elements you expect it had other exciting differences as well.

I think what makes this story so incredible is how clever it is. To me it seems like everything has been thought out meticulously, nothing seems thrown in and there aren’t any subplots that lose focus and don’t lead anywhere, everything has a purpose. It was like doing a jigsaw, you have the pieces of the puzzle but they were only revealed when it got to the point in the story you needed to match them up.

He pressed the needle to her skin, muttering incoherently while his features twisted in glee at the prospect of his newest experiment. “The time has come,” Hatta rambled, “to talk of many things-“

The snippets of the original story are worked in so well that they don’t feel out of place and it was so much fun coming across them. I’m sure there are some that I haven’t picked up on but it just means I get more surprises the next time I read Alice, as I will definitely be re-reading.

The writing was brilliant, it had an easy style and was able to build the world of Wanderland effortlessly, you were drawn straight into the action and I really found it hard to tear myself away from what was going on. I could have easily devoured this book in one sitting, unfortunately, the fact that my eyes just would not stay open hindered me in that respect, but there was the perfect amount of adventure and suspense to keep you immersed in Alice’s story.

Of course, the biggest pull of the book is the characters, Ms. Sullivan did a wonderful job taking characters from a well-loved story and making them her own. It was strange, in some instances, it felt like a natural progression, like in the case of Alice, how she was portrayed as a young adult and how her personality came across felt like she could easily have been the same Alice that visited Wonderland as a child. However whilst some characters shared some characteristics with their original they had this dark and edgy twist that made them all the more interesting. Even when I hated a character I felt drawn to them, itching to know what they were going to do next.

This is a book I would shout about from rooftops and I really hope that if you do read it that you get the same from it as I did. Personally, I cannot wait to find out the rest of the story and to get my hands on any more books that Ms. Sullivan writes!!

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