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Unbirthday
512 pages
A nostalgic yet eerie return to a childhood wonderland that has grown just as dark and complicated as adulthood.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping through a warped looking glass into a world that is both deeply familiar and unsettlingly wrong. It balances the stuffy, restrictive atmosphere of Victorian society with the vibrant, chaotic, and slightly menacing energy of a corrupted Wonderland. The pacing is brisk, driven by a creeping sense of urgency and eerie photographic mysteries that pull you deeper into the madness. It carries a wistful, nostalgic tone, exploring the bittersweet transition from childhood imagination to adult responsibility. Fans of dark fairy tale retellings will devour this surreal, atmospheric adventure, delighting in a heroine who learns that embracing her own eccentricities is the only way to save the magic she left behind.
- Mood
- surreal
- eerie
- atmospheric
- wistful
- Tone
- whimsical
- nostalgic
- slightly dark
- earnest
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- coming of age · societal expectations · reclaiming imagination · loss of innocence
- The writing
- Descriptive and atmospheric, balancing the stuffy manners of Victorian society with the twisted, surreal imagery of a corrupted Wonderland.
- The arc
- A journey from feeling stifled by the mundane expectations of adulthood to fiercely reclaiming the bizarre, imaginative power of youth.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave dark, nostalgic fairy tale retellings and love seeing classic heroines step into their own agency.
Content notes
- fantasy violence
- mild peril
- disturbing imagery
About the book
What if Wonderland was in peril and Alice was very, very late?
Alice is different than other eighteen-year-old ladies in Kexford, which is perfectly fine with her. She’d rather spend golden afternoons with her trusty camera or in her aunt Vivian’s lively salon, ignoring her sister’s wishes that she stop all that “nonsense” and become a “respectable” member of society. Alice is happy to meander to Miss Yao’s teashop or to visit the children playing in the Square. She’s also interested in learning more about the young lawyer she met there, but just because she’s curious, of course, not because he was sweet and charming.
But when Alice develops photographs she has recently taken about town, familiar faces of old suddenly appear in the place of her actual subjects—the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar. There’s something eerily off about them, even for Wonderland creatures. And as Alice develops a self-portrait, she finds the most disturbing image of all—a badly-injured dark-haired girl asking for Alice’s help. Mary Ann.
Returning to the place of nonsense from her childhood, Alice finds herself on a mission to stop the Queen of Hearts’ tyrannical rule and to find her place in both worlds. But will she able to do so... before the End of Time?
Description from Open Library.
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