Ever Alice is H.J. Ramsay's continuation of the much loved Alice in Wonderland.
Alice is now 15 years old and placed in an asylum because no one believes her about Wonderland, the white rabbit or anything to do with her adventures in Wonderland.
Everyone thinks that she's simply mad! But she just wants to go home, be with her family and live her life. She gets the opportunity to once she goes through a procedure that supposed to help cure her of her ailment. But she begins to have reservations and doesn't want to go through with it, the white rabbit is there to whisk Alice back to Wonderland. They need help in assassinating the Queen of Hearts and Alice is the one that they want to do it.
So much happens while she is back in Wonderland and she realizes that this place is her home, not England and not with her parents and sister who put her away.
So many twists and turns and the end was, wow! It all just adds up and kind of blows your mind in the end.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, it was really a great read.

This is the whackiest Alice in Wonderland take ever, and I love that. Most grown up Alice stories take a dark turn and get serious, and this one managed to do just that while keeping all the crazy that made the original fun.
I kept being shocked by all the nonesense that popped up out of nowhere. It's whimsy, it's wild, and you never know what's going to happen.
The only downside would be, Alice isn't too easy to understand. Her thoughts and worries make sense in a way, but I don't quite get her personality/what she wants. Otherwise! Lots of nonsensical fun reading this, and I love that it exists.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Rogue Press for a digital copy of this book for my honest review.

This story is about Alice. Yes, that Alice. The one who went down the rabbit hole. This is the story of Alice after Wonderland. It starts out with Alice who is in an asylum for her delusions. She has spent most of her time here and no one believes her.

Meanwhile in Wonderland the Red Queen is slowly going mad as well. She is still mad and continues beheading people left and right! Don't forget the butter in the tea. Rosemund is even more paranoid seeing conspiracies when there might be one there, or might not be.

We do come back to characters we are familiar with: The White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Doormouse (and so many more) and new ones that are introduced as well.

H.J. Ramsay did a wonderful job creating a world all her own while including the original world that Carrol originally created. The writing style was the same but her own as well.

I enjoyed the book and would love to read more by Ms. Ramsay!!!

This book took a while for me to get into, but the last third of it really saved it for me.

I LOVE fairy tale retellings, and I hadn't read an Alice in Wonderland retelling, so I felt this one would be hit my interests. And for the most part it did, it just took a minute to get there.
I loved the whole idea of the book, is Wonderland all in Alice's head, or did she really experience it. I think that's a question that always circles around the Alice story in general and it was fun to see it explored as a little bit of both in this novel.

I don't want to be spoilery and give away the ending, but it wasn't one I predicted or saw coming really until the last couple of chapters. I liked the unexpectedness of that part of the story.

Overall, I think this book is a great reimagining of a famous story, and although we are becoming reacquainted with familiar characters, I found Ramsay's take on it refreshing and a thoughtful read.

J. Ramsay creates a Wonderland that's just as fantastical as Carroll's original, but tinged with slight hints of madness and darkness. People do die. Alice has to make mature choices but it is pretty darn good. 5/5.

Who doesn't love the wacky world of Wonderland? Thanks to Ever Alice, we get to visit it again. This quirky little story tells the tale of Alice a second time, with a twist. Alice is older, she's been condemned to a mental asylum for her belief in Wonderland, and her only way to escape is to follow the White Rabbit back down the rabbit hole. But is it real, or is it all in her head?

I really enjoyed this re-telling. H.J. Ramsay creates a Wonderland that's just as fantastical as Carroll's original, but tinged with slight hints of madness and darkness. People do die. Alice is walking a razor's edge between safety and being beheaded, and her development over the course of the book follows her as she becomes stronger: a leader of an unlikely rebellion. But the story is a joy to read, and new twists on familiar characters- the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, even a fresh perspective on the Queen of Hearts- make it an enjoyable romp.

And that plot twist at the end... it certainly leaves things hanging!

*thank you to Netgalley,  H.J. Ramsay and Red Rogue Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

2 stars.

I struggled with this. Really struggled to get through it which is why it took me so long to do so. It was from page one that the story just seemed odd and out of place. The first few pages of a book are ment to let you quietly sink into the story while the world you are entering starts to show itself like a sunrise. Or sometimes in the first pages you get thrown into the story via the deep end. Neither of these happened at all. It felt scattered and I couldn't connect with it in a anyway. Even though the description sounded so positively up my alley, this unfortunately is a miss from me.

I have read several books that are "twists" on the classic Alice in Wonderland story, which seems odd to me, as I'm not really the biggest fan of the original! Ever Alice has a take on the tale that I feel has been done before, and slightly better executed, elsewhere, and in other media. It was an easy read, though, and not an entirely unpleasant way to pass an afternoon. Three and a half stars.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this arc.

I think that this was such an interesting topic, the book starts out with Alice and it’s been a few years after wonderland. She can’t seem to get over her experience and she continues to talk about them which eventually makes her family send her to a mental hospital in hopes that she gets “better” and that she comes out “cured”. But her family didn’t plan on the rabbit to help her escape and lead her back to wonderland to once again battle the queen of hearts. And once again her adventure in wonderland continues.


I think that for the most part this story was quirky and dark. I did enjoy the story and the direction the author took it. The characters were definitely interesting and not like I would have imagined they would turn out so many years later. While I’ve never been overly fond of Alice in wonderland, i still think this was decent retelling .

I love Alice Retellings, especially if they involve mental health. 

We follow the main character as she is caught in an asylum after being accused of being crazy when she tells the tales of Wonderland. This somewhat-creepy retelling continues back again when she escapes the asylum and enters into the world of Wonderland herself. 

Little does she expect that it may not be the saving-grace she thought. 

We get to revisit the characters turned dark as she ventures around and kinds herself on a daunting mission to kill the Queen. 

I enjoyed the storyline and how it did keep most of the characters but with a darker twist. This deserves the full 5 out of 5 stars.

I am HUGE classic Alice in Wonderland fan. The Wonderland aspect lived up to it's true nature, but not much else. It wasn't a bad read, but was far from what I am most familiar with. I probably wouldn't read it again. There are a few characters in here that I could've done without.

I’m going to start with Ever Alice as the disappointment of the summer for me. I started this back at the beginning of April, and I was excited to get going on it. I’m a huge Alice in Wonderland fan and I love the idea of an Alice re-telling that is supposed to be modern but also old school at the same time. The language used was supposed to be very ‘Lewis Carroll’ and Olde English which, in a modern-day setting intrigued me.
I got about 60% of the way through this and DNF’d. The language didn’t work and the character development was shallow and lacked any kind of depth. It was as though by using the language and writing the same plot line that was enough to make it an Alice re-telling. There were some character names changed and some genders changed, but that was about it. I really struggled with it. Two of the updates I posted to GoodReads sums up my thoughts really… ‘It doesn't feel like a new take on an old story - changing the gender of a character doesn't make it a re-telling if everything else is exactly the same’ and ‘This was blurbed as an Alice in Wonderland re-telling but actually seems to be a Through The Looking Glass re-telling, although I'm not wholly convinced it actually knows what it's trying to be at this point...’

As I DNF’d but got past 50% (just) I’m giving this a 1* out of 5.

Original Review on Brigiddowney.com

I got Ever Alice by H. J. Ramsey from Netgalley for an honest review. This might be my first DNF (Did Not Finish) book on this blog! Guys, I just couldn't finish this one. The concept was great-- Alice in Wonderland in a mental hospital is one of my favorite retelling archetypes. This book also had some great things going for it, the writing style kept the whimsy of the originals (of which I have a collection of different editions). It was disorienting and creepy just like the new live-action Alice movies and I really enjoyed the style.

The Plot was what got me.

See the original Alice books: Through the Looking Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had this careful balance that Lewis Caroll created. They were disorienting and whimsical, but I was never actually confused about the main plot. Alice falls down a rabbit hole following a white rabbit and gets sucked into a place called Wonderland with a cast of characters that are absurd, but the plot itself, at its very basic core, makes perfect sense.

Ever Alice doesn't have that balance. There was nothing to ground the reader in the craziness. I normally love books where you can't tell what's real and what's not with an unreliable narrator, but this was too much. The book switches points of view so often that half the time I didn't even know who was speaking. On top of that, there was no indication of character motives. Alice one minute is talking about giving up Wonderland so she can get out of the mental hospital and then the next is following the White Rabbit with very little persuasion. I get that on some level she's crazy, but mood swings are not shown to be one of her symptoms anywhere else. In fact, her only symptom as far as the doctors are concerned is having an overactive imagination.

The last issue I have is that this book assumes the reader already has the original Alice books read and understood pretty much by heart. You won't get most of what's going on if you haven't read the originals. Most retellings assume they exist in an alternate reality of the originals. They don't assume the audience knows the original, look at any Disney movie compared to a classic Grimm fairytale. In Ever Alice we are given no indication of how she knows what Wonderland is or why she is in the mental hospital.

All this was so offputting and confusing I gave up reading this. It dragged on and didn't keep my interest. Maybe some of you will disagree, or loved it. Maybe some of my questions would have been answered if I kept reading, but my TBR pile is growing daily and there are other books I'd rather put my time into. Someday I might come back to it, but not today.

Just wow! Ever Alice was an interesting take on a well known story. Almost like a sequel, the story is about Alice, now 15, who has been put into an asylum for her stories about Wonderland. When she decides to undergo an experimental procedure just to be able to go home, she has doubts at the last minute and leaves with the White Rabbit to head back to Wonderland. There we see the Queen of Hearts is indeed still mad, and the characters personalities have changed somewhat from the original story.

What I loved most about this book was that H.J. Ramsay was very talented in keeping the "madness" of Wonderland throughout the story, examples being putting butter in their tea, or preferring that beds are lumpy and blankets scratchy. Hands down one of my favorite takes on a story that is near and dear to me.

I loved seeing in the mind of a villain and this book have you a great look into that. very well done by the author. The story was very well written.

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This felt like a dark sequel to the classic Alice tales and I absolutely adored that. I also really enjoyed all of the political elements of this story. This one wasn't quite perfect for me though. I found that the middle dragged for me and I also found most of the side character to be less compelling than I expected, especially because this is a wonderland tale. That aside this was really fun and dark and whimsical and a worthwhile Alice retelling!

This book was an interesting concept. Alice, a few years older than when we last saw her in Lewis Caroll's book, is having trouble adjusting to normal society. Desperate, her parents put her in an asylum, hoping for a "cure" to her embarassing imaginations. Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts continues her reign of terror in Wonderland, striking off the head of any and all who offend. When Alice is transported away from the tortures of the asylum back to Wonderland, will she become the Queen's next victim?

Although the concept was interesting, I struggled to maintain interest in this title. The irrationality of the Queen of Hearts sections seemed to be missing the original whimsical nature of the Carroll original. I tried to get through it four separate times and ended up having to give it a DNF at about the halfway mark.

This was not for me. I expected a dark continuation of Alice in Wonderland, and while it seemed to start off like that, the whole middle part of the story was quite a slog to get through, with repetitive scenes of crazy Red Queen and almost shoe-horned sillyness, while our familiar Wonderland denizens are barely recognizable to me. The ending is quite dark and was an interesting twist, but for me didn't make up for the effort it took me to get to it.

I think the idea of EVER ALICE is really clever. It seems completely plausible to me that if the Alice from the original story came back from Wonderland and tried to explain her adventures to her family and friends, they would send her to an asylum.

That premise also gives EVER ALICE a darker, creepier feel. This Wonderland feels much more like something created by Tim Burton rather than Lewis Carroll. Several scenes show victims of the Red Queen’s conspiracy theories getting beheaded. She chooses food and drinks that become increasingly gross.

Something felt missing for me in reading the book, though. I wanted more from Alice. She’s a passive character, constantly getting caught up in other people’s plans. Even when she finally (about 60% of the way through the story) commits to a course of action, she still relies on others to lead her to the solution to her problem.

I liked that the story isn’t as simple as a girl falling through a rabbit hole into another world. (Though I guess that doesn’t sound all that simple.) I liked that it left me with questions about what Alice really experienced. All in all, I’d say EVER ALICE wasn’t the best fit for me as a reader, but it was an interesting leap from the original story.

If you’re looking for a reimagining of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, I recommend Umberland, the second book in the series by Wendy Spinale.

Ever Alice is a strange and interesting take on Alice in Wonderland taking place in an asylum. It takes place after the original story which is why people think Alice is mad. In trying to escape, she finds herself back where she began...Wonderland. But now she has a mission, to eliminate the Queen of Hearts. Will she go through with it?

This book was super creative. I love Alice in Wonderland and this story kept the magic happening. The twists and dark turns made me keep guessing until the end. If you like Lewis Carroll, you will love this.

I received this book in exchange for review.