The Mad Hatter takes Alice to go find the Dormouse but ends up having to deal with a berserk Duke (the eater of regrets) instead. The Duchess is no longer able to function as a substitute Alice, so Alice invites the Duke to eat him and sees a vision of himselfkilling a girl (his sister?) named Alice and taking her place. The Mad Hatter learns from the White Rabbit that Alice is probably not Alice, but the Cheshire Cat seems to want him to be, to the point that he killed the previous Alice so that the new male Alice could take her place. Meanwhile, the Duchess has been replaced, and a past Alice is walking around as a regret.

If none of that made sense to you, don't worry, because it didn't make a whole lot more sense to me either.

This series still isn't working for me, and I think it's time to stop and move on to something else. Are You Alice? is boring, nonsensical in a bad way, and chock full of uninteresting mysteries and characters I don't care about.

The Cheshire Cat is okay, I guess, and so far intrigues me more than any of the other characters, but the new developments (both Alice's vision and the flashback to what the Cheshire Cat did to make room for the new Alice) were just blah. The more I read, the less things make sense. It's possible that the story and characters improve, but I don't really want to make the effort to find out.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )