Not quite the retelling I was expecting, but better!

I love authors that take classic texts and spin them on their heads and give you the not so happy-ever-after. Often I close books and wonder, 'what next; and Ramsey has answered that in a way that is both faithful to the original but places it firmly in the realities of our world.

I, personally, could have lived without the dual narrative, as that is not really my personal preference, but I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone that loved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

While the story was just ok, it meandered all over the place and the character development was lacking. Also, it didn’t seem nearly as whimsical as the original. However, it was a great premise but it was only touched on in the beginning and end.

Thank you so much to Red Rogue Press and NetGalley for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I have tried so many times, 4 to be exact, to read this book and I’m finally admitting defeat. I love the story of Alice in Wonderland and I thought I would really enjoy this. It’s not what I would call a retelling, it’s more what happens to Alice after she returns from Wonderland. The idea of a book about after Wonderland sounded amazing but this book lacked so much. It wasn’t as fantastical or whimsical as the original and the dialogue was so boring and all over the place.

I feel if you’re going to write a continuation of a classic you should at least attempt to make it as great as the original.

I had to DNF this book - it wasn't for me at all. I'm a huge Alice in Wonderland fan and I am always looking for good retellings but more often than not, they let me down and this was no different.

An entertaining book with a satisfactory and dark ending. I would certainly buy this book for me or others. It didn't quite live up to my expectations however, it is a good read.

I loved how dark and quirky this book was. It was stunning. I also loved how many of the characters they kept true to the original. It felt like more of a sequel to a future Alice rather than a new book entirely.

It was like greeting an old friend who had a new story to tell you.

DNFd at 10%, not what I was expecting and definitely a bit pretentious at the beginning. May give this another chance in the future, but it doesn't seem likely.

I am a huge fan of fantasy and re-tellings, so I had to give Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsay a try!
It's always interesting to see a new twist on the Lewis Carroll classic. I felt that the quirkiness of Wonderland was captured quite well by the author. I felt that Alice herself could have been given more agency and control.
More detailed review to come! Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC for me to review!

My apologies for not reviewing this book. I was unable to download it before the archive date. I would in the future really like to read it

Eight years after Alice's adventures in Wonderland, she has to return again in this retelling by H.J. Ramsay.

Alice, now 15 years old, can't stop talking about Wonderland. Her parents can't figure out what to do about it, so they send her to an insane asylum. When she finds out her sister is getting married and the only way to attend the wedding is to be cleared sane, she does everything she can to make the wedding. Her doctors decided to take her to Switzerland for an experimental treatment that they hope will quiet her talks of Wonderland. Before the procedure, Alice decides she has to escape and not get the procedure done. To her surprise, the White Rabbit helps to whisk her away to Wonderland again and asks for her help in a plot to kill the Queen of Hearts.

Two perspectives
Ever Alice swapped point of views between each chapter. One chapter would be Alice and the next chapter would be the Queen of Hearts. I thought at first this might be interesting to get two sides of the story. Maybe get a bit of Alice needs to kill the Queen but does she really sort of thoughts going around. But nope. Didn't get that. The Queen's side of the story was dull. She constantly had conspiracies about things going on around her. She didn't really have anything going for her that made her side of the story interesting. Chapter after chapter, it was the same issues with her.

Unfortunately, Alice's perspective wasn't much better. I've never read a book where the main character just lets things happen to them.
If the Queen was dull, Alice a complete bore. She didn't push the story forward any, she was just there. She was a fly on the wall that only really observed the story and had next to no effect on what happened next.

Whimsical Wonderland
Now, I didn't read the original Alice in Wonderland. I've read excerpts and seen the Disney adaptions along with a couple of retellings. I should read the original sometime, but that's beside the point. I've always felt Wonderland is whimsical and a bit upside down. I didn't really get that in Ever Alice. Words were changed for opposites (what an unpleasant day) and things were odd like putting butter in tea that tasted awful, but it just didn't feel light and whimsical. This book is a little bit darker, but the setting just wasn't Wonderland for me.

Slow at the best of times
The pacing of the book just didn't sit well with me. It just seemed to constantly drag on and on. It might have been because the Queen's side of the story was repetitive or because Alice was a lifeless blob, but I wanted something a bit faster that gripped me. Alice is brought to Wonderland to KILL THE FREAKING QUEEN! Give me some action, some planning, some drama. But Alice doesn't even want to kill the Queen at first. She's just content being a handmaid to the Queen and letting the White Rabbit continue with his plot.

Just wanted more...
The idea of the plot was good. I wanted Alice to be this little badass kicking down doors, finding herself in Wonderland, and just taking control of her life. But it wasn't that way. The execution was poorly done. I wasn't drawn to the story or the characters and, to be honest, I just didn't care. And the ending... I think the surprise twist ending honestly made me dislike the book even more. It just felt like anything the book could've amounted to was squashed in the ending. The ending definitely seemed planned from the beginning and the build-up to it was lacking. I was just left feeling like "oh... okay... yeah I guess that just happened."

Ever Alice gets a whooping 2 Stars from me. The plot gave it so much potential and it just fell so flat. The characters had nothing going for them, nothing that made me want to keep reading. I've decided to go watch the SyFy Alice mini-series again to enjoy an Alice retelling.

Red Rogue Press provided a copy of Ever Alice through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to read this book!

When Alice returns home from Wonderland and tells everyone about her amazing adventures they think she has gone mad. When she refuses to admit she made everything up, she is committed to a mental institution. Treatment is about to begin, when Alice spies the white rabbit and decides to once again follow him.
Another adventure in Wonderland awaits, but this one is very very different from anything she experienced before. Can Alice save Wonderland and in doing so, maybe save herself...
I did enjoy this book. It was filled with unexpected twists and turns but the ending wasn't what I was expecting or wanting.
It's a twist on a fairy tale, which I usually adore. However, Ever Alice, left me wishing for more magic and wonder.

I was so excited for this, the premise sounded exciting - A 15 year old girl considered mentally ill because she keeps insisting her stories are true, she escapes to go back and finds a changed Wonderland, but it fell short. I didn't get the Wonderland vibe. When I hear Wonderland I expect whimsy and fantastical. I really didn't appreciate her changing unbirthday to mean birthday, when it's any day that is not your birthday. Maybe i'm salty because I like the unbirthday song in the movie.

I've read another book that was remarkably similar with the mentally ill consideration and escaping back to Wonderland that I think did it better. This wasn't a bad read but it wasn't what I was hoping for or what it could have been.
I did like wondering what's real.

It was a interesting twist to Alice in Wonderland, i really liked it and the twist that came with it. It didn't have the ending i'd hoped, but i like it nontheless.

Alice, former frequent visitor of Wonderland, is now 15 years old and in a mental asylum for talking about her adventures in Wonderland with the White Rabbit, Red Queen, Mad Hatter, and all the rest as if they really happened. No one believes that Wonderland is a real place full of whimsy and madness. No, they just believe that Alice has, in fact, gone mad herself.

When Alice, desperate to leave the asylum, agrees to an experimental procedure (think lobotomy) to cure her of her madness, she changes her mind at the last minute when the White Rabbit - named Ralph in this story - shows up to save her. Alice escapes to Wonderland where she learns that the Red Queen, named Rosamund, is up to her old antics of beheading everyone in her sight and throwing tantrums, except she has gotten much worse. It seems there is a plot to assassinate the Queen, and Alice quickly finds herself in the center of a scheme to rid Wonderland of its wicked Queen.

Sounds like an exciting premise, right? Unfortunately Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsey fell far down the rabbit hole for this avid Wonderland fan, with my #1 complaint being that this just did not feel like Wonderland. Where's the whimsy? Where's the fanciful characters? Where's the fun? This book could have essentially taken place in any other fantasy world BESIDES Wonderland. The novel read as if the author had applied some baseline Wonderland knowledge to her plot, but that she even fell short in that. Ramsey over-relied on making words mean the opposite of their actual definition - in fact, this is practically the only whimsy she inserted into her story - making this fantasy novel feel tired and trite. The application of opposite meanings was even used incorrectly in some places, such as calling a character's actual birthday his unbirthday, when in fact, an unbirthday is any day of the year that is not your actual birthday.

Furthermore, the storyline was just not exciting. Alice, as a main character, was a bore - the girl who was full of wonder and curiosity is no more, leaving behind an insecure young woman who is fully distracted from her assignation plot by the half-hearted advanced of semi-attractive young men. Getting through this book was like plodding through a swamp, and the only time it truly caught my interest - and thus saved the novel somewhat for me - was the twist ending *SPOILERS AHEAD* where we learn that Alice, in fact, did NOT escape her experimental procedure and was thus lobotomized, leaving her trapped inside her mind - in Wonderland - forever.

liked the concept but the writing wasn’t my cup of tea. sadly DNF :((( maybe i’ll try again some day

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy of this book. I love anything Alice in Wonderland related but recently have run into some adaptations that I didn’t like. I started to think the good adaptations were a thing of the past but I loved this story! Entertaining and original! I can’t wait to share it with others who enjoy a good Alice retelling.

I still haven't read the original Alice in Wonderland books. But I have watched the animated and movie versions of the books so I guess I am not that clueless when it comes to the story.

Ever Alice is a re-imagining of the original story. In this book Alice is now a 15 year old girl who is considered mentally ill by everyone around her and is institutionalised because she keeps insisting that her stories about Wonderland are true! While in the asylum, the doctor prescribes a new experimental treatment. At first, Alice is alright to go ahead with it but gets cold feet on the day of the procedure and while escaping finds herself going back to Wonderland. But she finds Wonderland a changed place as well....it is a darker and more ruthless version of the Wonderland she knew as a child and she's not sure what to make of it. Even her old friends, the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter seem to have developed ruthless personalities with dark motives of their own.

The ending will definitely make the reader question......what is real???

This is a well written book although it is a bit on the darker and depressing side of what one would, I think, expect from a Wonderland story.

My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for providing me with an e-ARC of the book. I will go with a 3-3.5* rating.

I finished this book and was left with mixed feelings. The way that wonderland was written was perfect. It was quirky and fun and had me smiling throughout. But Alice felt kind of detached and I just wasn’t as interested in her story as I was in the world. I still enjoyed the book, as I do with most retellings.

DNF @ 50%. The premise sounded so interesting, but it just didn't work for me. I think when you do a retelling of a book, especially one as popular and well known as Alice in Wonderland, it needs to stand out as a distinct work and this missed the mark on that point, in my opinion. It seemed like it was trying too hard to be unique and quirky and cutesy and fun with the way the characters spoke and it became overdone really fast.

Alice in Wonderland, the timeless classic that has delighted us for years, continues in Ever Alice. One can always expect dark and twisted stories when it comes to any version or adaptation of Alice and this does not disappoint.

The author has continued the story. While I love all things Alice, at times I did have a hard time staying engaged with the storyline and I am guilty of putting the book down to read other books and then returning to this story... then putting it down and returning. Perhaps this is no fault of the author, simply an issue that the reading material is familiar and not all of that far off the story line.

I would like to thank NetGalley for the ARC. After reading the traditional Alice in Wonderland in my classroom, I do still think we will cover this book in the class as well so we can continue a character study and see how the characters change and evolve and study "author perspective".