This book caught my eye – I’ve been trying to diversify my bookshelves, and I’m an easy sucker for a good deconstruction of classic literature – and I’m glad I picked it up. It offers up an engaging heroine and an imaginative incarnation of Wonderland tangled up in 21st-century Atlanta.
Alice’s life changes the night her father dies, in more ways than one. Losing her father deprives her of a part of herself, but the same night, she also has her first encounter with Nightmares, monsters from the fantastical world of Wonderland who feed off of negative human emotion and cross over into our world. The encounter introduces her to Addison Hatta, an exiled Wonderlandian who identifies humans he can train to fight the nightmares. Before long, Alice is balancing school, home life, and interdimensional monster-hunting, and unsurprisingly, it’s hard for her to juggle all three. But when a mysterious figure emerges claiming to be a dark villain from Wonderland’s troubled past, she has no choice but to step up, and she embarks on a dangerous mission to save that world as well as her own.
There’s a lot to like about this book, chief among them probably being Alice herself. A heroine who’s flawed and unsure of herself but also determined, Alice revels in Wonderland’s incredible qualities even as she faces its monsters with trepidation. I love that she’s a huge fangirl (her and Kamala Khan, I tell you – teenage me would’ve loved these girls!), and I appreciate that portaling to another world without missing curfew presents serious challenges to her life. The first-person narration ranges from fun and snappy to vulnerably heartfelt; I’m glad to be in Alice’s head each step of the way.
Some of the Wonderland details are really neat. It’s been years since I read the Lewis Carroll books, so I’m sure there are some references I’m missing, but there’s plenty of fun easier inclusions for me to enjoy, like Addison and his Wonderland compatriot Maddie setting up shop on Earth at the Looking Glass pub filled with significant referential tchotchkes, or fellow monster hunters the Tweedladovs, nicknamed Dee and Dem. (Admittedly, some of the reference are a little too on the nose: Alice’s two cats are named Carol and Lewis?) I also like the vivid descriptions of the environments and flora in Wonderland, as well as the specifics of how magic works there. When you combine elements of Wonderland into our world, it gets really interesting, especially seeing how hard it can be for a Black girl from Atlanta to fight otherworldly monsters attracted to human fear, hatred, and anger – a major undercurrent running through the story is the recent police murder of a local teenage girl, and the Nightmare that grows specifically out of that community grief and upheaval presents a far greater challenge for Alice.
The novel is author L.L. McKinney’s first, and I’d say it feels like a first novel. There are points where the dialogue or the narration practically says, “And now here’s some exposition!”, so it can be unpolished in places, but the creativity of the piece, the fun banter, and the strong character work in Alice easily make up for it. (Also, I have to smile at the YA-ness of nearly every male character being a hot teenage boy, or in Addison’s case, hot immortal-ish Wonderlandian who has the appearance of a teenage boy.)
One more thing I need to mention: going into the book, I didn’t realize it was the first in a series, so I was not prepared for the ending. I’m happy I’ll have more opportunities to explore this world with Alice, and I wouldn’t say it’s not quite a Suzanne Collins/Hunger Games-style cliffhanger ending, but it definitely had me going, “Wait, no, but what happens next?”
Warnings
Violence, language, and strong thematic elements.
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