Alice is only sixteen and already doing badly in the world, defying the law and doing poorly at school.¹ But she doesn’t want the world anyway. She wants to be that fantastic and dangerous thing, a Wonder. Of course, she soon reaches Wonderland, and all its color and chaos cannot hide its darkness. In The Wonderland Trials, Sara Ella crafts a dystopian retelling of Lewis Carroll’s classic, reinventing with flair all Wonderland’s denizens and infusing the story with freshness. Characters are sharply realized, and first-person narration gives the young heroine an appealing voice. The novel explores themes of believing without seeing, yet grants religion little notice or importance. Although indebted to a classic, The Wonderland Trials is inventive and colorful in its own right, abundantly able to charm and to intrigue.

Best for: Fans of dystopian tales and modern retellings of classic stories.

Discern: Peril to minors; games that serves as popular entertainment and sometimes cause physical injury to adolescents; frequent deception, even among those purportedly on the right side; the heroine steals and breaks the law without repentance or reckoning.