Wonderland

By: Miranda Renae

Narrated by: Michelle Shure

Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Kaleb "Rabbit" White hates everything about his life, especially his job at Red Queen Inc. He had plans to quit until a dangerous experiment went wrong, killing an entire room full of people....

Except for one.

Alice.

It’s been four years since Alice contracted the virus that killed so many others. She's secretly weathering its strange side effects, and trying to overcome her past and live like a normal college student. But one day Kaleb leaves Alice a note with a single word:

“Run.”

Alice needs answers. Kaleb wants to protect her. Trapped inside Red Queen Inc. and hunted by its loyalists, they must work together to find a way out. But first, Alice needs to find the cure.

©2020 Miranda Renae (P)2022 Immortal Works

ends on a cliffhanger

Not quite what I expected from the synopsis, but not bad. FYI It does kind of end on a cliffhanger though, it that's the sort of ending that bothers you.

Meh, with annoying narration

It's ok for the story to be messed up, because Alice..
The narration had me banging my head against the wall. Every word ending in ing was pronounced een.
"Red Queen Inc" was Red Queen Eeenk. Think =theenk. Just horrible.

Can't take it.

I would have hoped that one of the core requirements to be a reader for an audiobook be that you pronounce the words correctly. I cannot listen to this person. The story isn't very interesting to begin with. But the reader is too slow and mispronounces words. e.g. "tie-end" instead of "tightened."

Modern Day Alice in Wonderland

Clever, modern spin to the "Alice in Wonderland" story. I think it would be most enjoyed by a teen/young adult audience. The story builds up to the sequel. I probably won't read/listen to it, but younger readers might enjoy the series. The narrator's enunciation was just a little bit off-putting. She was one of those that do not pronounce the letter t if it is in the middle of a word. So "mitten" is pronounced "MIH-en", "important" is pronounced "im-POR-unh", etc. She would pronounce "ruin" as "ru-een". A bit annoying. Other than that, she did a nice job narrating.

Alice in Wonderland meets Resident Evil. Good premise. Boring execution.

This book had all the potential, but the execution was so boring. Inner monologues, personal struggle, hidden feelings and struggle. The whole story was masked by these. An opportunity missed. I’m not suggesting I needed a complete absence of these; but give us a little bit of action! Move the story along. Have something interesting to say.

The story came second to the feelings of the individual characters and as a result the story that took place while people struggled with their feelings was lackluster.

Compelling Story

There were many good things about this story. I loved how elements from the original book were woven into the contemporary setting. I do have to say that I found the narration distracting in that she drops her " t" sounds in the middle and at the end of words. She read with wonderful feeling but I found this to be very distracting.

Confusing modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland

I was confused during a lot of this book. I had the same reaction to Alice in Wonderland, so I guess if that was her intention, this writer did a good job.

There are a number of minor characters who I could not tell apart. They had different names, but few other unique features.

Much of the plot depended on unrealistic decisions made by the characters.

There was point of view narration from a few different characters, but they all had the same thought processes and ways of looking at the world. Again, I had trouble figuring out what was going on most of the time.

I usually have no problem with the narrators for all the Audible books that I listened to, but this reader had an accent that also led to my confusion. She pronounced "steel" the same as "still" and "feel" the same as "fill." In one scene, I thought at first the characters were climbing down a "still" ladder. Nope. It was supposed to be "steel." Very confusing. Her pronunciation of "ruined" as "ru-eened" drew my attention to how many times that word was used in the book. Seems like the writer could use a thesaurus.

Annoying

I wanted to like this book, but I found the protagonists constantly making bad decisions annoying. I found the narrator dropping her t's from words very annoying. Button was bu-in. Important was impor-int. Listening for the next mispronunciation distracted me from the story. The plot holes were annoying. It wasn't awful, but I am glad it was a short book.

Dislike narrator

Hard G’s and dropped t’s Very disconcerting. The narrator’s pronunciation gets in the way of listening to the story.

Story is a jumble and needs some help to smooth it out. No character depth.

Disappointing

After seeing the reviews I did not expect such a poor story. Keep searching, definitely not worth the listen.