Wonderland

By: Miranda Renae

Narrated by: Michelle Shure

Kaleb "Rabbit" White hates everything about his life, especially his job at Red Queen Inc. He had plans to quit until a dangerous experiment went wrong, killing an entire room full of people....

Except for one.

Alice.

It’s been four years since Alice contracted the virus that killed so many others. She's secretly weathering its strange side effects, and trying to overcome her past and live like a normal college student. But one day Kaleb leaves Alice a note with a single word:

“Run.”

Alice needs answers. Kaleb wants to protect her. Trapped inside Red Queen Inc. and hunted by its loyalists, they must work together to find a way out. But first, Alice needs to find the cure.

©2020 Miranda Renae (P)2022 Immortal Works

ends on a cliffhanger

Not quite what I expected from the synopsis, but not bad. FYI It does kind of end on a cliffhanger though, it that's the sort of ending that bothers you.

Meh, with annoying narration

It's ok for the story to be messed up, because Alice..
The narration had me banging my head against the wall. Every word ending in ing was pronounced een.
"Red Queen Inc" was Red Queen Eeenk. Think =theenk. Just horrible.

Can't take it.

I would have hoped that one of the core requirements to be a reader for an audiobook be that you pronounce the words correctly. I cannot listen to this person. The story isn't very interesting to begin with. But the reader is too slow and mispronounces words. e.g. "tie-end" instead of "tightened."

Modern Day Alice in Wonderland

Clever, modern spin to the "Alice in Wonderland" story. I think it would be most enjoyed by a teen/young adult audience. The story builds up to the sequel. I probably won't read/listen to it, but younger readers might enjoy the series. The narrator's enunciation was just a little bit off-putting. She was one of those that do not pronounce the letter t if it is in the middle of a word. So "mitten" is pronounced "MIH-en", "important" is pronounced "im-POR-unh", etc. She would pronounce "ruin" as "ru-een". A bit annoying. Other than that, she did a nice job narrating.

Alice in Wonderland meets Resident Evil. Good premise. Boring execution.

This book had all the potential, but the execution was so boring. Inner monologues, personal struggle, hidden feelings and struggle. The whole story was masked by these. An opportunity missed. I’m not suggesting I needed a complete absence of these; but give us a little bit of action! Move the story along. Have something interesting to say.

The story came second to the feelings of the individual characters and as a result the story that took place while people struggled with their feelings was lackluster.

Compelling Story

There were many good things about this story. I loved how elements from the original book were woven into the contemporary setting. I do have to say that I found the narration distracting in that she drops her " t" sounds in the middle and at the end of words. She read with wonderful feeling but I found this to be very distracting.

Confusing modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland

I was confused during a lot of this book. I had the same reaction to Alice in Wonderland, so I guess if that was her intention, this writer did a good job.

There are a number of minor characters who I could not tell apart. They had different names, but few other unique features.

Much of the plot depended on unrealistic decisions made by the characters.

There was point of view narration from a few different characters, but they all had the same thought processes and ways of looking at the world. Again, I had trouble figuring out what was going on most of the time.

I usually have no problem with the narrators for all the Audible books that I listened to, but this reader had an accent that also led to my confusion. She pronounced "steel" the same as "still" and "feel" the same as "fill." In one scene, I thought at first the characters were climbing down a "still" ladder. Nope. It was supposed to be "steel." Very confusing. Her pronunciation of "ruined" as "ru-eened" drew my attention to how many times that word was used in the book. Seems like the writer could use a thesaurus.

Annoying

I wanted to like this book, but I found the protagonists constantly making bad decisions annoying. I found the narrator dropping her t's from words very annoying. Button was bu-in. Important was impor-int. Listening for the next mispronunciation distracted me from the story. The plot holes were annoying. It wasn't awful, but I am glad it was a short book.

Dislike narrator

Hard G’s and dropped t’s Very disconcerting. The narrator’s pronunciation gets in the way of listening to the story.

Story is a jumble and needs some help to smooth it out. No character depth.

Interesting concept *slight spoilers*

I like the concept and the world that has been created here. The story is good too, but the characters are all kind of one note. Everything Alice thinks or says comes out like she’s in a constant state of just realizing something. Caleb has no moments in which he isn’t making it clear that he’s a martyr. I didn’t even realize (and this could just be my ADHD missing it early in the story) that they’re not a couple until the end of the book. She reacted to a quick kiss from him, saying he’d never done it before, and I found myself so baffled at the idea of a couple of several years having never kissed.

I think the old tropes of characters knowing each other so well that every little thing they do is “something they only do when [insert emotional reaction],” is overused in a lot of stories. It just oversimplifies the complexities of love and the human experience.

So focused on a phone screen you block out everything around you - an accurate and good use of knowing someone. That’s real.

Pacing in a cell during a life or death situation, however, can be more than the one reason they do that while safe at home. Adrenaline, pain, stress, and so many other things can give someone the energy and urge to pace. Pacing is stemming, not a process. People don’t really have just one reason for doing most things, and most things people do go unnoticed by even their closest loved ones. Sometimes the curtains are just blue.

With all that said, and probably unnecessarily so, I did enjoy this and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes next and how the characters and author develop throughout this series. The last author I read a first novel of and these types of critiques became my favorite author as soon as I read the second in their series. I have preordered everything they’ve released since and will take a day off work to immerse myself in it. That is to say, I’m excited for what comes next in this series.

Signed,
Privileged White Queer Dude That Should Just Stop Talking