Alice ~ Christina Henry

If you’ve been following us for any period of time, you’ll know that my favourite genre of book is probably fairytale retellings and that Christina Henry is the absolute queen of twisting childhood favourites into something horrific. This is not the first time I have read Alice but it was still as good as the first time.

Part of the reason I reread Alice is that it’s been long enough that I’ve begun to question whether it was as horrific as I remember it being or did I build up its graphicness in my head over the last couple of years. I did not.

Alice starts with our beloved heroine in a mental asylum. Through the mousehole in the wall, Alice has formed a friendship with Hatcher, in the asylum for killing a lot of people. Then, a fire breaks out in the asylum and the two of them escape, along with the fearsome Jabberwock.

Christina Henry is my favourite author and so this review is probably very biased, but each time I read something of hers, I fall more in love with her writing. I love how she takes something that everyone knows so well and twists it into something almost unrecognisable but is such a good read. Some people might hate what she has done to the beloved Alice, but I think it’s about time it’s been given an adult facelift. 

Alice is a dark book and features many subjects that might be triggering, but in no way is it glorified. At its centre, Alice is a story of a girl reclaiming her power after having it stripped away from her and finding who she is in this scary new world that she has found herself in after a childish mistake led to so many horrific things. 

Alice and Hatcher are both complex characters, each with so many issues, but they trust and love each other and above all, they respect each other’s trauma. They both work through their trauma in different ways and whilst sometimes they frustrate each other, they understand that not everything is going to be fixed the same way and that is something that I think Christina Henry does better than many other authors I have read. 

If you haven’t guessed it already, Alice by Christina Henry is a five-star favourite. I’m very much looking forward to rereading the other books and her new stuff.

C🌙