Break the curse, save her mother, rescue the guy and make it out of Wonderland alive. It's a tall order for a tiny girl, but Alyssa Gardner proves that she's up for the challenge in this reimagining of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
A.G. Howard's debut novel is not simply a modern retelling of the Alice story, but an extension of the original tale that gives the familiar characters new histories--with a contemporary kick. Here, Alyssa (great-great-great-granddaughter to Caroll's Alice) must travel to wonderland to "fix Alice's mistakes." The story is tightly plotted, but even when you think you know just where you are headed, the author reminds you that you are still in Wonderland, where things are never as they seem.
Howard brings creepiness and danger to the fore in her version of Wonderland, which is filtered through a lens of grotesque beauty and turns Carroll's ingénue into a skater chick in Lolita garb. First romance plays a significant role, too, as Alyssa accidentally brings her boy-next-door crush with her down the rabbit hole, only to run into Morpheus, the dead-sexy, winged "netherling" of her dreams. Throughout the narrative, Alyssa must confront unimagined horrors both on Earth and in Wonderland, as well as face her own dark side and desires.
Splintered is an inventive, well-written novel that will interest fans of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Twilight, and The Looking Glass Wars. --Julia Smith, blogger and children's bookseller emerita