Review: Splintered by A. G. Howard

Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own

I loved this book! I think. It wasn't an extraordinary book like Shadow and Bone but it wasn't as terrible as Alice through the Zombie Glass (quite frankly, most books are better than that one). Splintered is a unique book, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, with a lovely love triangle.

The Good: The original Alice in Wonderland never appealed to me.  I avoid classics like the plague; I find them tedious and boring and they are never able to catch my interest and keep it like a good book should. But Splintered? That book had me reading it during class (shhh, don't tell my profs!), at lunch, while I should have been doing homework, and late at night. It was an easy read, I read it in two nights and I loved every minute of it.

In Alyssa's family, the women were crazy, to the point of institutionalism. From the blurb on the back, I think it's safe to say that it's no spoiler to say that Alyssa finds out, during the course of this book, that the women in her family weren't crazy--far from it--they were adventurous and brave. Not only was Alyssa gutsy but impulsive, she was the hero of the story, something I very much appreciated. I suppose the author really wouldn't have had much of a book if Alyssa didn't embark on a quest to, you know, save the world but they could have done it badly, and they didn't.

The story resembles a screwed up version of Alice in Wonderland, a story so similar to the original but yet so different and disturbing that I was legit creeped out through a good part of the book. Have I mentioned that I like creepy? This wasn't a boring remake at all. In fact, I prefer this book to the Alice movies I've watched (assuming they kept to the story line).

Have I mentioned that I adore love triangles? This one between Alyssa, Jeb (her longtime friend) and Morpheus (the childhood friend who is manipulative but beautiful and caring) was especially interesting, considering Alyssa had to choose between a human and a mythical creature (for lack of a better word). Each man had something different to offer her (see spoiler section for my opinion of the final verdict).

I want to address something I don't usually: the aesthetics of the book. Not only is the cover beautiful and colorful, the font is purple, something I've never come across before. It was beautiful, though at night my eyes were so tired that the purple morphed into black font. Not the end of the world. I've found that books that have a model's face on them often makes me put down the book. After all, this is my reading experience. I don't want someone else telling me how my characters look. Their face is for me to come up with, not the publishers. Fortunately, this didn't deter me; that could be because I received this from the publisher and felt obligated to read it but I was also drawn to the colors on the cover and the font color so even if I didn't get it for review, I would have read it anyway.

The Bad: The way Jeb treats Alyssa is eerily similar to how Edward in the God-awful Twilight series treats Bella. He ends up being the hero, though Alyssa wasn't incapable of taking care of herself but she was pestered way to many times by Jeb about staying safe. That doesn't mean she's a strong female lead--she very much was. She was brave, intelligent, and cunning but she took too much of what the men said to her to heart.

The Final Verdict: Well worth your time. Now, for the fun part:

Be ye warned, spoilers ahead!

Oh my gosh. Jeb. Jeb went through the whole book with her and was the supporting character to Alyssa's story but...but... then he's gone. He's not dead, mind you, but he may as well as died in Wonderland. When Alyssa wished that he had never come with her, she saved his soul, but she also severed a special connection she had with no one else and would never have with anyone other than her mother. But, a mother-daughter relationship is very different from the romantic one she developed with Jeb and therefor did not make up for the lost time and romance she had with him during their adventure.

I'm glad her mom got out of the asylum. I was wondering how they'd make her seem sane again and I thought being stocked up with meds were a great way to make her no longer bat-shit crazy.

As for Morpheus, well, I can hardly feel bad for him. For one thing, there's no reason to feel bad for him. Although he only kinda-sorta got what he wanted, he got to live--outside of the box, no less--and he could still flit in and out of Alyssa's world. Whether that was to spy on her or watch out for her, that's TBD.