Just Finished Reading .... Splintered by A. G. Howard

Freebie Friday will be on hiatus during the holidays!

Splintered
by A. G. Howard
To be published on January 1, 2012
by Amulet Books.

Source: e-ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. Read my FTC disclosure here.





My summary: Alyssa Gardner and her mother Allison are descended from Alice Liddell -- the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. When Alyssa was a child, her mother descended into madness and was locked in a mental ward. Now that Alyssa is older, she's falling prey to the same hereditary demons: she can't drown out the voices of the bugs and flowers that speak to her. During one visit with her family, Alyssa's mother begins ranting about a family curse and buried treasure. On an internet site, Alyssa finds a strange message: if you want to save your mother, find the key. Suddenly, Alyssa falls through the looking glass, into a strange world where nothing is as it seems, and is drawn into age-old rivalries, racing against time to save her mother and herself.

My take: I don't think I've ever read the original Alice in Wonderland. My only familiarity with the story are other retellings: the Disney movie version and then the Tim Burton version. Based on that, I thought Splintered was a clever, imaginative version of the Alice story.

Let's face it -- Alice in Wonderland is a pretty trippy tale, and Splintered does a great job of taking the book's signature elements -- things like the looking glass, the Red Queen, the White Rabbit, the caterpillar -- and weaving them into a completely different story that's still true to the original. That old "girl who's afraid she looks/acts like her crazy/dead mother" isn't a brand-new trope in YA, but the "girl who hears bugs talking" certainly is. I loved the beginning of Splintered, which shows us Alyssa making bug collages, Alyssa plugging in earphones and heading to the skate park to drown out the bug voices, Alyssa visiting her mother in the mental institution. Alyssa's in love with her best friend, a fellow skateboarder and former juvenile delinquent named Jeb, who is in love with mean girl Taelor, who is just as annoying as the spelling of her name.

But most of the story takes place in Splintered's version of Wonderland. To me, this part of the book was strongly reminiscent of the fae fiction I've read -- rival queens and courts, tests to endure, characters under spells and curses. If you loved the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, Splintered will definitely be your kind of book.

I'm not the hugest of fae fans, but I do love a book that blends the historical with the fictional. While I was reading Splintered, I had all kinds of questions about the real Alice Liddell, and when I have a chance, I'm definitely going to do more research into her relationship with Lewis Carroll. I'll also be on the lookout for future books by A. G. Howard!