{Book Review} INSANITY by Cameron Jace

Book Title: INSANITY
Author: Cameron Jace
Publisher: author
Publishing Date: December 2013
Length: 254 pages
Source: purchased
Book Blurb
After accidentally killing everyone in her class, Alice Wonder is now a patient in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. No one doubts her insanity. Only a hookah-smoking professor believes otherwise; that he can prove her sanity by decoding Lewis Carroll's paintings, photographs, and find Wonderland's real whereabouts. Professor Caterpillar persuades the asylum that Alice can save lives and catch the wonderland monsters now reincarnated in modern day criminals. In order to do so, Alice leads a double life: an Oxford university student by day, a mad girl in an asylum by night. The line between sanity and insanity thins when she meets Jack Diamond, an arrogant college student who believes that nonsense is an actual science.

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I bought this book because of the cover and because I wanted to read Cameron Jace's retellings. (I still haven't gotten around to reading them all. I suck. Sigh.) When #COYER (Clean Out Your E-Reader, run by my blogging friends Berls and Michelle (Fantasy is More Fun and Because Reading is Better than Real Life)) had a readathon weekend of fairy tale re-tellings, I knew this was a perfect time to take out INSANITY! =D I had plans for two other books, but life got in the way.

The Alice in this story was kidnapped at seven and fell down the rabbit hole. But she no longer remembers any of that thanks to the asylum's electro-therapy. She learns she has been in the asylum for two years, having been committed after she killed her schoolmates, including her boyfriend Adam J Dixon. When we meet Alice, she is planning her escape, and yet ruins it by going back for her Tiger Lily flower. She is caught by her sadistic, unsympathetic guards - a nurse and a guard, who take great pleasure in her electro-therapy the next session. But Pillar the Killer, another inmate, has different plans for Alice. Pillar swears she is the Alice and needs her to help stop the Cheshire Cat.

Alice in Wonderland was never my favorite growing up. I don't know why it wasn't when I adored other fantasy tales, but something always grated my nerves about the book. So imagine my surprise at the incredible enjoyment I got from reading this twisted tale! I thought Cameron Jace's tale was interesting, held my attention, made me question if this is all in her head or if it's truly happening, redefined the idea of sanity and insanity, and made me eager for more. I look forward to reading the next book and hopefully having more of Alice's past, both recent and in Wonderland, exposed to the reader.