Reviewed by: Sue Eaton

TITLE: Alistair In Wonderland

SERIES: Wonderland Ever After book one

AUTHOR: Ariella Zoelle

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 283 pages

RELEASE DATE:  October 21, 2022

BLURB:

Alistair falls down the rabbit hole and becomes the new Alice. Can hesave Wonderland’s magic by falling in love with his fated mate?

My life sucks until Bianco shows up. He’s a gorgeous albino who promises me a fun adventure while looking like a handsome prince from a fairy tale. I happily follow him down the rabbit hole in the hopes of getting up to some sexy shenanigans.

Imagine my shock when I discover he’s the famous White Rabbit from the books and one of the last shifters left in Wonderland! Even more surprising is finding out I’m a descendant of the original Alice, which means I’m the only person who can bring the missing magic back to their world.

That’s all well and good, but our incredible chemistry is highly distracting. It’s impossible to resist our intense attraction when I’m his fated mate, so why bother trying? But maybe there’s a way to have it all.

What if forming a mating bond with Bianco is the way to make all my dreams come true and save Wonderland at the same time?

REVIEW:

I loved this modern adult take on one of my favourite classic children’s books.  The author reimagining the White Rabbit, Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat as shifters was brilliant, she manages to retain the madness of the characters captured so well in the original but gave them their own shifter / human sides that meshed beautifully with the story.

The author uses the original book as a map / guidebook within the storyline, which is fascinating to read, it helped me to refresh the little details I had forgotten but it isn’t a copy.  The plot is built upon hundreds of years after Alice, when the magic is fading, and Wonderland is in peril.  So, the references to the past which impact the present are perfectly balanced and make sense.

Alistair is in a job he hates, working with people he despises, and he feels like he is at a total dead end in his life.  He has always been told he is a distant relative of the original Alice from the book but is that just family folklore.  Having little to lose and desperately wanting an adventure, he follows the mysterious man he has just met.

Bianco is enigmatic and it is soon apparent that he is the White Rabbit in human form.  The connection between the two of them is immediate but neither one recognises what that connection means beyond that immediate attraction.

I loved how Alistair throws himself wholeheartedly into Wonderland and all the new people he meets, people he sort of knows from the original book, but he soon finds out that the book didn’t always tell the full story of the characters.  All the time Bianco is there guiding him and supporting him. The connection they share growing stronger by the day.

Alistair is in Wonderland to fulfil his destiny and save the magic and by extension Wonderland, he worries that once he has done that he will be made to go back to his humdrum, boring, life.  The close he gets to Bianco the more he worries about what he might lose.  Bianco shoves his feelings aside as he worries he isn’t enough and doesn’t want to get in the way of Alistair fulfilling his destiny.  The book is very low angst with very little mis-communication and eventually they realise what they mean to each other and in reality they are the key to fulfilling Alistair’s destiny.

I enjoyed that Wonderland now has a King and the description of his family tree and how they got from the wicked Red Queen to the King they currently have.  Whilst Bianco and Alistair are the central characters, the other wonderful characters play such an important role within this book, and I can’t wait to read further books in the series to see how these characters develop and get their own happy endings, I hope.

RATING:

BUY LINK: 

Amazon