Unhinged

Title
Unhinged
Author
A. G. Howard
Published date
03/04/2019
Pages
460
Publisher
Uroboros

Unhinged by A. G. Howard is the second book in Splintered series, a retelling and continuation of Alice in Wonderland story. After her adventures in Wonderland Alyssa came back to real world and decided that it is here that she truly belongs. She tries to live normal life and even though she plans to tell Jeb the truth and to help recall his forgotten memories from Wonderland, she’s not planning to come back there. But the magic kingdom has certainly not forgotten about her, and nor has Mprpheus either. He’s not only visiting her in dreams, but also showing up in her high school pretending to be a new exchange student. Alyssa tries very hard to ignore all of this, but when more and more of Wonderland keeps leaking to the real world she will have little choice and has to help Morpheus once again.

In this book, unlike in the first one, most of the action takes place in the real world. It doesn’t mean we miss all the weird creatures and magic of Wonderland. The farther the book goes, the more strange things will be happening, and Alyssa will be in the middle of it all. I think plotwise this sequel was more interesting then Splintered. There was more plotting, more intrigues and we learn some very interesting facts about protagonist’s family.

I’m not a big fan of Alyssa as a main character. I find her behaviour very irritating and she plays helpless damsel in distress far too much. I didn’t like her reasoning for not telling Jeb the truth and I didn’t like how she keeps ignoring all the signs that things were really wrong in Wonderland. The whole love triangle thing was making me roll my eyes all the time. Morpheus is the only main character that I actually like in this series. Besides him I love Chessie of course.

The book is quite engaging and easy to read (except the romance parts which I totally don’t get). There are some big revelations happening, and the ending is very good. It isn’t a cliff hanger per se, but it left us in a place, where we can’t just stop reading this series. I’m very curious how Alyssa and her friends will escape the troubles they got themselves in. And I think in the third book most of the action will take place in Wonderland again.

If you liked Splintered you’ll love this one even better. It was slightly better for me, but my problem with those book is that I’m not really thrilled with characters. But the setting, author’s ideas and recreation of Wonderland, but more dark and cruel is very interesting. I’ll read the last book too, just to see how the story ends and what the author has for us in a grand finale.

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