Alice Isn't Dead

A Novel

By: Joseph Fink

Narrated by: Jasika Nicole

From the New York Times best-selling coauthor of It Devours! and Welcome to Night Vale comes a fast-paced thriller about a truck driver searching across America for the wife she had long assumed to be dead, performed by the voice of the Alice Isn’t Dead podcast, Jasika Nicole, with an exclusive essay written and read by Joseph Fink.

"This isn’t a story. It's a road trip."

Keisha Taylor lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day that Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned, and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn't dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country.

Following a line of clues, Keisha takes a job as a long-haul truck driver and begins searching for Alice. In pursuit of her missing wife, she will stumble on a forgotten American history of secret deals and buried crimes, an inhuman serial killer who has picked her as his next target, and an otherworldly conflict being waged in the quiet corners of our nation’s highway system - uncovering a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman.

©2018 Joseph Fink (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Loved this book!

I loved the podcast, and I love the book, in both similar and different ways. Alice Isn’t Dead is a truly unique and gripping story, with action and adventure, as well as romance and anxiety. Joseph Fink is an amazing writer, and I cannot wait to see what more he has in store for all of us.
Jasika Nicole is also a terrific narrator. She did a great job on both the podcast and the book, and I continue to love her as Dana Cardinal in Welcome to Night Vale. I really hope to continue to hear her voice.

Intersectional Americana Action Thriller

This book brings a refreshing take on the Americana genre, referencing it's roots while shattering it open with a diverse, queer story. If you like magical realism, road trips, mythology, and fight scenes, you'll probably love this book.

Beautiful work

I’ve followed the Alice Isn’t Dead podcast since it first began, and the novel gives new perspective into the beautiful storyline. I suffer from severe anxiety and identify with many of the feelings that Keisha endures. Since I began with the podcast, it’s wonderful to hear Jasika Nicole narrate the audiobook and continue to hear Keisha as I have for the past three years. I regularly recommend the podcast to friends and family and will do the same with the novel.

Creepily good

I’m normally not into horror books, but I heard this was a book with a black lesbian main character with anxiety whose wife secretly isn’t dead and it sounded amazing, so I picked it up. When I finished it, I had to actually take a minute to compose myself, because my heart was beating super fast. I feel like this would make a great movie, honestly. The images that the author created were so vivid that I felt like I was actually watching a movie instead of listening to an audiobook. Some of the stuff was just too bizarre for me, which is why this is a 4 star review instead of a 5 star one, but I liked it overall!

Compared to the podcast...

The ending is better than the one in the podcast, although I still found it a bit disappointing. Unfortunately all of the psychedelic moments of unexplained horror from the podcast have more or less been cut out to focus on the base story.

Interestingly, one character who appears at about the halfway point is almost completely different from the podcast even though they still fulfill the same role.

big fan of the podcast

book is somehow better? jasika nicole is a great narrator and this book is so amazing the ending brought me to tears. not because it was a sad story but because the experience was over and i would never get to experience it again for the first time. the ending isn't sad it's just a wonderful story and i believe that anyone could find something to enjoy here. I don't want too say too much because I don't want to give anything away, but I am so happy that theres a main character that is a woman of color and is LGBTQ, it's just great, amazing. Fink is an incredible writer, his prose is amazing, theres some definitive mythology at work here and some horror elements. I found myself relating to Keisha so much, especially because of her anxiety and the monsters she battles both figuratively and literally. Love is a magical thing. This book is great.

disappointing

I was a huge fan of the podcast and since this was one of the only joseph fink books I hadnt read, I thought Id get it. It took me a few chapters to get used to the new format of narration but Jasika Nicole is awesome so that was okay. However, the story just did not work for me. It was at times boring, at times obvious, but it felt like I could watch the story be written as it developed, and to me thats just bad writing. Its a bummer, cause the podcast is cool, but sadly, in my opinion this really wasnt. Sorry :T

Great performances undermined by bad ending

The characters that were developed over the course of the book or exactly what I wanted - you need an interesting. The evil is creepy in an unsettling way, and it's perfect for the themes of the book. But holy cow I found the final few chapters of this book very unsatisfying. The author leans so hard into allegory that they completely abandon the character and world building that has been done up until that point. I think that it really undermines the interesting world and story being built here, and that's too bad because it's a pretty good one.

This isn't a story. It's a Road Trip.

That first line of the book hooked me in almost immidiatly. Joseph does a great job expressing the disorder of anxity. I would highly recomand this book to anyone that might suffer from such a disorder, as to help them cope or work with the disprder. You cannot get rid of it, but you can live with it.

Amazing and Scary

I listened to this after finishing the podcast. The writers are amazing but I already knew that. Beautiful but also scary there were times I had to stop listening bc I was freaked out. The police in the story are especially scary given the times we now live in. Please listen to this book.