Splintered by A. G. Howard

Why did I take so long before I picked up this book? I'm sure I saw the fawning in the blogging world, why did I ignore it? Why, I ask, why?

Yeah, you can probably see that I really love this story. Why? I'm not quite sure. I mean, it even has a love triangle, and you know my ambivalence towards such things. Although in this case, I not only didn't mind, I actually picked a side - Morpheus and Alyssa is my OTP for this book :D (Because who dates another girl just to get the girl he likes off his mind? That's unfair to the girl he's dating - even if she is mean).

Splintered is not so much as a retelling of Alice in Wonderland as it is a sequel. But in its own way, as Alyssa makes her way through Wonderland and 'fixes' the mistakes Alice made, she's re-tracing her ancestor's journey. I don't think I need to say more about the plot, but trust me when I saw that the last part of the book is when everything goes insane. It was probably my favourite part because all those plot twists came out then!

Character-wise, I really loved Alyssa. And Morpheus (ok, I'll stop for now). I thought that considering that she had been dealing with the thought that she was going insane like her mother for the last few years, she handled things very maturely. And I love the fact that she went into Wonderland not to run away from anything, but to save her mom. Extra points for the love!

Morpheus, was an evil genius. I admit that the way he was portrayed meant that you'd either hate him or love him, but I looked at the way he took care of Alyssa when she was younger (up until the ___[Redacted due to spoiler - just assume it's a traumatising incident]____), and my heart melted. Plus, his Alyssa-crush was always obvious to me.

Jeb is the ordinary best-friend/secret crush. He's actually an all-round nice guy, which made his fights with Morpheus extremely amusing to me. The only thing I didn't quite get was why he was dating a girl that so obviously hated his best friend's guts - well, I think that relationship was very badly handled :p

I'm really really really looking forward to the next book. Unfortunately, the publishers on NetGalley turned down my request for an ARC of Unhinged, so I'll have to wait!

Note: This book was read for the fairytales retold reading challenge. Carol himself considered it a fairytale, and I will too.