Review: Splintered

Splintered by A. G. Howard 

Publisher: Amulet
Publication Date: January 1st 2013
Pages: 371
Source: Library
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Goodreads

This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence. Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.
When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

This book took me about a week to read, which is much longer than it usually takes me to read a book. I had heard so many good this about this book that I was confident I would like it when I grabbed it off of the library shelves. The book started out great and then it very quickly changed for me. I'm not going to get very deep intor this review because I really have very little to say. This book confused me beyond belief, and I just can't help but not like this story.

When the story takes place in the human world I thought the book was great because I understood it. But as soon as the book goes down the rabbit hole something in my mind just stopped understanding about 50% of what was going on in the story at all times. I love fantasy, and this usually isn't a problem for me, but the world that is wonderland completely disoriented me. I knew what was going on in the moment most of the time, but whenever something was explained, or some greater plan was exposed it just went right over my head. This happened so much that I don't really know what the whole point of the story was or how thing ended up the way they did.

This book was pretty jumpy in general. One thing would happen and then another thing would happen and on and on and I just couldn't keep up.

The characters in the book I felt were pretty plain. Facts were thrown out about them, but I really didn't see much of a personality in any of the characters. I liked how Alyssa and Jeb both had very arty styles and both skateboarded, but that was pretty much the only major fact that was revealed about who they were. They were both supposed to have the typical 'broken' background, but neither character's background was revealed enough for it to be relevant to either character.

The only thing I really liked about the story is how the author went about the romance details. It was very cute, though I did think Jeb was quite over protective of Alyssa.

Keep in mind that most people don't have these opinions about this book. I think this book just isn't mean for me, or I just wasn't reading it at the right time. I encourage you to look for other review of this book before you make a decision.