Down The Rabbit Hole ~ By Julia Crane – 2.5 Stars

Tags

Family Relationships, Fantasy, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Valknut Press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

230 Pages

Synopsis: Alice is not the lovable girl the stories depict. A lifetime of pain and illusion has left her disturbed. 

Unpredictable. Dangerous.

For years, she’s watched her twin sister–a girl born into light and destined for power–with great envy. According to the prophecy, only one of them will survive.

What will Alice sacrifice? The sister she hates, the man she loves, or the innocent lives caught in her twisted web of magic?

From the premise, I was fully expecting to love Down the Rabbit Hole, but although the story started out strong, it mostly lost steam for me before it’s midway point. Alice’s voice comes across quite strong and it was enjoyable seeing a darker side to this classic character. She’s a nasty piece of work, but at the same time, I felt her pain and anguish because of the way she was raised. The Red Queen is her mother. Need I say more? She does some pretty despicable things throughout the book, particularly toward her sister Lacie, but there was a part of me that still felt sorry for her. The romance between Alice and Landon happens in the first couple of chapters, and it just wasn’t believable. One minute he’s expressing how much he loathes her, and the next he’s madly in love with her, (although he’s not happy about it.) Lacie, Alice’s twin was likable but needed to be developed more. Because she comes across as one-dimensional, this takes away from the relationship between her and Alice. The storyline was interesting, bringing in classic characters like the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat, while giving the plot an imaginative twist, but there’s not enough world-building and things got rather confusing, especially toward the end. It’s too bad because I think this book had loads of potential. Although Down the Rabbit Hole wasn’t for me, if you’re a fan of quirky literary retellings, I’d still encourage you to give this a try.