Book 1 in the White Rabbit Chronicles
AUTHOR: Gena Showalter
PUBLISHED: September 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: zombies, urban fantasy
PREMISE: Alice's family is killed by creatures her father had always insisted were real and Alice becomes a hunter.
MY REVIEW: I went against my better judgement and picked this one up because I loved the idea of Alice in Wonderland being retold with zombies. I had not liked Showalter's adult series at all but I thought perhaps maybe her YA writing would be better. After all, I'm not crazy about Caine's Morganville Vampires but I actually quite like her Weather Warden series. Turns out I should have gone with my instincts and avoided this.
First of all warning: don't do what I did and get tricked by the marketing scheme. This actually has nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland what so ever. It is not a retelling at all. It honestly is pure coincidence that the character's name is Alice. I suspect the publisher took the name and said "well what if we played on Alice in Wonderland? That has a big following after all!" and it didn't matter to them that in fact the Alice in Wonderland illusions are minimal at best. Sadly, this scheme will most likely work very well for them.
I could forgive letting myself get tricked by marketing if the book was at least good. Sadly, it's not that great. It is typical UF YA du jour with zombies and basically nothing creative going on. There's a plot there I supose and if you're looking for a read with no brain power then sure, this fits the bill. However even as a non brain power read this book gets annoying fast. Alice is a annoying main character who naturally falls for the typical douchebag Alpha male complex love interest. It doesn't even do me the decency of focusing on zombie action, it mostly focuses on boring melodrama between Alice and her annoyingly stereotyped friends. Spare me.
If you are a Showalter fan, then you'll probably get a kick out of this. It seems to be her usual stuff just in YA and with no explicet sex. Unfortunately I am not a Showalter fan and this book just ended up being annoying because it really could have been so much more awesome then it is.
WHO SHOULD READ: Gena Showalter fans
MY RATING: Two out of Five failtastic marketing ideas
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