BBNYA Review: Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsey

I received this book to read and review as part of the 2020 BBNYA (Book Blogger Novel of the Year Award) and the BBNYA tours organised by TWR Tour Team. All opinions are my own unbiased honest thoughts.

BBNYA is a yearly competition where Book Bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors. If you are an author and wish to learn more about the 2021 BBNYA competition, you can visit the official website: www.bbnya.com or @bbnya_official and follow this link to enter. (Please make sure to read the terms and conditions before entering).

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⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Ever Alice is a story that takes place where Alice in Wonderland left off. Now I should pre-face this by saying whilst I enjoyed the Disney (animated) film and general story of Alice in Wonderland, I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual original story – my ongoing challenge with classics. But I have generally really enjoyed the small number of re-tellings I have read so far, so I was definitely pleased when one of the titles I got to read was Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsey.

Told in dual perspective, our narration follows both Alice and Rosamund (the Queen of Hearts). For Alice, her return from Wonderland has been anything but easy. Assuming her tales of Wonderland as madness, her family have her taken to an Asylum in the hope of curing her presumed condition of insanity. Hoping to be free of the hospital, but determined that the White Rabbit and her adventures existed, through a series of events Alice finds herself back in Wonderland. Where a plot to overthrow the Queendom is in full effect.

Rosamund’s paranoia is highly explored in her narrative, with her memorable “off with their head” making a number of appearances. Convinced that some in her Queendom are hoping to overthrow her, Rosamund is suspicious of any behaviours that do not match with her expectation of her court. Causing her to become more isolated, her actions more dramatic and the beheadings… more frequent.

Of course I will not go into too much further detail about the later plot, as I would encourage you to read the story for yourself. An element of the story I enjoyed was how the author managed to parallel the story to the original whilst making it her own. A lot of the original cast returns in this story but with further depth to their characters. It is interesting how they all build into this somewhat different but also very similar version of Wonderland and their motivations or loyalty in relation to the Queen of Hearts.

The story continues in the vein of weird and wonderful – at time I personally did struggle a little with the amount of weird. But I would not really have expected anything less from a delve into Wonderland. And the ending… well that will really make you think.

TLDR? An interesting take on the continue adventures of Alice following her exit and return to Wonderland, including a plot to finally take down the dictatorship of the Queen of Hearts… and join us for BBNYA 2021!