This was a strange interesting story I read over 100 books a year and I have never read anything even close to this and the audiobook experience is the way to go

(2.0 Stars)

Where to begin with this review. I should start by saying that I am not the target audience for this book. So you could probably stop reading this review right now and just move on to the next one. However, I am the target audience of the description for this book.

I read the audiobook version, but more on that later.

This book billed itself as "Teens and YA", "Mad Max meets Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children", and "a dystopian adventure". This book is none of that. I also see a lot of comparisons to Alice in Wonderland, and while I think the author had Alice's Adventures in mind while writing this book, I simply don't see it.

What this book is, is a Children's book. The main protagonist is a ten-year-old girl, and the book is written at that level (with some odd, and unnecessary, sexual references thrown in). I'd say much closer to Pippi Longstocking meets The Wizard of Oz. If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, you will immediately realize this is more of an alternate reality fantasy, or maybe fever dream, but certainly not what I would consider dystopian.

As I said above, I read the audiobook version, which was described as being narrated by the author. It was provided by #NetGalley, but this was not a typical unabridged narration. It was performed by a full cast (including the author), complete with sound effects, musical chapter breaks, and not at all what I was expecting.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'll try to review this as a children's book. It has very vibrant characters and descriptive "worlds". The story is easy to follow, and has girls in leading roles. If you like watching Eloise, you would probably like this, especially if you'd like it with a heavy fantasy element. This is a fast moving, imaginative adventure. The cast of characters is acted out as an audio drama, and the book is neatly divided up in parts, since the overall length of the book is more than 10 hours.