Splintered

Splintered by A.G. Howard

Splintered follows the story of Alyssa Gardner, a sixteen year old girl who can hear the voices of  insects and plants. This is bad news since the women in her family have a history of mental illness. Alyssa’s grandmother, Alice, inspired the writing of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Turns out Alice really did go to Wonderland and something happened while she was there to bring a curse on the Gardner family. So now, Alyssa has to go back to Wonderland and find a way to break the curse. She unintentionally drags her close friend and crush, Jeb, along with her on this adventure. But in Wonderland she meets Morpheus, a seductively charming netherling, and she finds herself fighting a growing attraction to him. Alyssa soon discovers the real Wonderland is much darker than the one described in the fairy tale version.

Morpheus─the dark, magical netherling creature from Wonderland─is the most intriguing character I have come across in a YA book. EVER. Thank you, A.G. Howard, for dreaming this awesome story up! This is one of those books where it was love at first sight. The second I laid eyes on it in the bookstore I was sold. And I’m not even a huge Alice in Wonderland fan. But A.G. Howard did such an amazing job with this reimagining of Alice in Wonderland that it can appeal to die hard fans and non-fans alike.

One of the reasons is the goth-punk characters, which are easy for a contemporary audience to relate to. A.G. Howard made the main character, Alyssa, into a skater-girl, and I absolutely adored the detailed descriptions of her funky clothing. I also haven’t stumbled across another pierced character like Jeb since Seth in Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. Alyssa and Jeb are both troubled teens who use art as a way to express themselves and this makes their characters all the more interesting.

And this book does a great job with world building. It was great fun to go along on this adventure with Alyssa and Jeb and explore this whole new world and the magical creatures that live there. There is always lots of action taking place and Alyssa never stays in one location for too long so we get to see a lot of Wonderland and it helps to keep the plot moving at a good pace.  One of my favorite parts of the story was figuring out the enigma that is Morpheus and the mystery of what really happened to Alyssa’s grandmother, Alice.

This book would have gotten a five-star rating from me on Goodreads, except that I got very annoyed with Alyssa at one point in the book for the way she was treating Morpheus. Morpheus was definitely no saint but I still didn’t feel he deserved the way he got treated at times. Morpheus praises Alyssa for being compassionate but there were times when I saw a real lack of compassion from her when it came to Morpheus. But hey, maybe I’m just biased because I’m team Morpheus. This book wasn’t perfect, but then again, what book is. This book came pretty close to perfect for me though and was one of my favorite books that I read in 2017.