White Rabbit

DNF @ ~150pg

If it tells you anything about how severely I disliked this book, I only got a little over 100 pages into it and I had a literal full PAGE of bullet points for things that I found to be nonsensical, annoying, or downright unhealthy.

I wanted so, so badly to love this book. There are so few own-voice gay books in the world that, when I saw this on NetGalley, I immediately requested it and was ecstatic when I got my approval. Plus, the fact that it was a thriller, and judging by the title, had some relation to an Alice retelling? Yes! This book was supposed to be perfect!

Unfortunately, it completely bombed for me, right from the beginning. It starts off with an incredibly unhealthy portrayal of a relationship, as the main character gushes and raves about how his ex-boyfriend (of a whopping month-long relationship) completed him:

“I was like a violin—an object that hasn't much purpose until someone touches it, fills it with resonance, draws things from it that it can never produce on its own. Sebastian had been the one to draw music from me, and it's why the end was so bad; before him, I'd never actually realized how painful the silence was.”

please

any

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Feiwel & Friends for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!