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A review by shellballenger
Wonderland by Zoje Stage
2.0
Type of read: Commuter Read.
What made me pick it up: One of the prompts for the Tennessee R.E.A.D.S. challenge for October is to read a book with an orange cover. Full disclosure, this was the second book with an orange cover that I was waiting for in my library loan list. The fact that the description here on Goodreads references The Shining was really all I needed to add to my TBR.
Overall rating: First, I just have to say...there are all these big words in the book, the characters have such unique names, and Stage decided to use "tree people" instead of arborist?! I don't know why this bothered me so much but I think it spoke more to just the general ridiculousness of the book than avoiding the use of a proper term for a profession that works with trees.
'Wonderland' felt like the beginning of House Hunters, 'I'm a retired ballerina and my husband is a struggling artist, we're looking for a new start somewhere completely different and we haven't thought about the implications for our actions but want to spend a shitton of money on something we'll ultimately complain about and wish we never did.' 'Oh yeah, and our budget is tens of thousands of dollars...' as they'll remind you throughout the episode. *smh*
I don't know why 'Wonderland' rubbed me the wrong way so much. Maybe it was because I had a preconceived notion of what it should be based on the description? Maybe I wanted it to be much better than it was? It just didn't do it for me. I'm all for amorphous beings and mystic hauntings, but damn, this felt like a bad night with too many wine coolers that could have been resolved by just sitting down, eating some chips, and drinking a Pedialyte.
Overall, I didn't hate 'Wonderland,' there were definitely some good parts, but at the end of the day, it needed something to make it more real. Yes, I get that we're talking about a horror story where a main character is a tree, but come on, if the author can't make it feel real, how is the reader supposed to feel like it's real? I guess the fact that I had any sort of reaction, and still finished the book, does say something about the storyline and how it was written.
Reader's Note: I enjoyed 'Wonderland' as an audiobook and struggled with the sound. Xe Sands is an absolutely phenomenal narrator; however, their pitch is so low that I struggled to manage the audio volume as there were often portions of the book that were just too low for me to hear clearly.
What made me pick it up: One of the prompts for the Tennessee R.E.A.D.S. challenge for October is to read a book with an orange cover. Full disclosure, this was the second book with an orange cover that I was waiting for in my library loan list. The fact that the description here on Goodreads references The Shining was really all I needed to add to my TBR.
Overall rating: First, I just have to say...there are all these big words in the book, the characters have such unique names, and Stage decided to use "tree people" instead of arborist?! I don't know why this bothered me so much but I think it spoke more to just the general ridiculousness of the book than avoiding the use of a proper term for a profession that works with trees.
'Wonderland' felt like the beginning of House Hunters, 'I'm a retired ballerina and my husband is a struggling artist, we're looking for a new start somewhere completely different and we haven't thought about the implications for our actions but want to spend a shitton of money on something we'll ultimately complain about and wish we never did.' 'Oh yeah, and our budget is tens of thousands of dollars...' as they'll remind you throughout the episode. *smh*
I don't know why 'Wonderland' rubbed me the wrong way so much. Maybe it was because I had a preconceived notion of what it should be based on the description? Maybe I wanted it to be much better than it was? It just didn't do it for me. I'm all for amorphous beings and mystic hauntings, but damn, this felt like a bad night with too many wine coolers that could have been resolved by just sitting down, eating some chips, and drinking a Pedialyte.
Overall, I didn't hate 'Wonderland,' there were definitely some good parts, but at the end of the day, it needed something to make it more real. Yes, I get that we're talking about a horror story where a main character is a tree, but come on, if the author can't make it feel real, how is the reader supposed to feel like it's real? I guess the fact that I had any sort of reaction, and still finished the book, does say something about the storyline and how it was written.
Reader's Note: I enjoyed 'Wonderland' as an audiobook and struggled with the sound. Xe Sands is an absolutely phenomenal narrator; however, their pitch is so low that I struggled to manage the audio volume as there were often portions of the book that were just too low for me to hear clearly.