Hi All!
I hope everyone’s week is going well!
This week I read the last book in the Alice: Pick a Card Series, “Alice in the Joker’s Last Laugh”. Like usual, I laughed, I cried, and I wanted more Kaeden Hart!
This journey through Wonderland with Alice has been such a fun and wild ride! I’ve been so fortunate to be gifted with review copies of each book in the series, and it’s quite bittersweet to me that it’s finally come to an end.
Please note, given this is book 5 in the series, I won’t be giving away any spoilers and will be keeping my review fairly vague. Hopefully this inspires you to check out the series even more!
Before we get started, here are the links to my reviews for the first four books in the series:
Book 1: Alice in the Land of Clovers
Book 2: Alice in the City of Diamonds
Book 3: Alice in the Palace of Spades
Book 4: Alice in the Prison of Hearts
And without further ado, let’s find out who got the last laugh in the series finale!
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, New Adult, Fairy Tale Retelling
Publication Date: December 12, 2022
Booksirens Blurb:
Once upon a time, there was a girl in a magical world who longed to go home…
That girl was me.
I thought going home would solve all of my problems, but I was proven wrong when I was forced through the Jabberwock’s looking glass against my will. Trapped in Oxford, I was made to watch as the one I loved and everything I knew turned to stone.
But I was never one to stay where I belong, nor listen to others’ warnings, so I returned, only to be thrown into a world of disarray.
Chess is threatening war, the Kingdom of Hearts has been drained of color, and the one true heir to the throne of Cards is missing. At the same time, the man behind it all, my husband, sits gloating with a title that was never meant to be his, surrounded by a parade of Alice look-alikes. The secrets he holds could lead to Wonderland’s damnation…
But in the end, it is I who holds all the cards.
What I liked about the book:
1. After all the speculation of book 4 and B.A. Lovejoy being taken aback by reader’s enthusiasm over Kaeden Hart, I was quite happy with this ending. I won’t say much more than that, but I will leave you with this: everything and everyone ended where it was supposed to.
2. I loved how much of Alice in the real world we got to see, and just how much Wonderland has impacted her. For someone who was adamant about going home, she really didn’t fit in when she got there.
I also loved how TERRIBLE Peter was. I was legit worried about her fancying him in book 1, and I’m glad the author rid him of all redeeming characteristics finally.
3. I liked how the author left the ending up for spinoffs/returns to Wonderland. I’m really hopeful that we will get to see other stories in Wonderland, featuring different main characters, but with potential pop ins from our original favorites.
4. Let’s talk about those covers. I don’t feel I’ve appreciated them enough in my past reviews, but these covers are the things of book hoarders’ dreams. They are pretty, they have the style down pat while throwing in enough details specific to the book the cover is referencing, and they are just plain intriguing. These are the types of books you buy for the cover so your bookshelf looks gorgeous.
5. Like the past books, I loved the political events that took place and those that we still haven’t seen finished by the end of the book. Further evidence that we need spinoffs! I also really enjoyed getting more insight into the history of Wonderland. The history has been so artfully crafted throughout this series and it’s quite well done.
6. In typical B.A. Lovejoy fashion, there were several lines I LOVED:
“I was fairly certain that if I had stopped thinking, then everything would have been easier. Stupid people were very often the happiest of people…To be stupid was truly a gift, one which I wished most vehemently that I could receive. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to be stupid.”
—
“My grandmother had been a housewife, my mother too, and my sister was a housewife; and if they had their way, I would be a housewife as well…Which was why Wonderland was so captivating, because I had been more there. A clock repairer, an almost-dragon slayer, a noble, and a prisoner. That was far more lives than a woman could have expected to live in England.”
Not really a tough choice for me either…
—
“But I liked Reginald better, because he was far softer than Cornelius, and far kinder; one should never underestimate the appeal of a quiet man.”
Like mother like daughter???
—
“The echoing realization that for every action and inaction, for every choice that I had blindly made and for every decision that I had blindly rushed into, there was a cost, even if it not my cost to pay.”
And this was the moment that Alice finally grew up!
—
“ ‘I am a delight,’ I proclaimed, knowing that I very well was not.”
This is basically me every day of my life 🤷🏼♀️
What could have been better:
1. My biggest gripe in this book, and really all of them looking back, is it seems like the author wrote a whole story and then decided where to break it up into chunks.
The good part of this is it’s cohesive as hell. It picks up right where it left off in the previous book and it really sucks you back in quickly.
The bad part of this is it doesn’t work well if you don’t toss the reader bones back to the previous books. There were several times I had to go read my highlights from the previous four books just to understand what the hell was going on or what people were referring to. For such a long series, I would have appreciated more throwbacks/nods to things previously established in prior books so I didn’t have to do this.
2. Alice’s mother had a much bigger role in Wonderland than we originally anticipated, and I’m sad we didn’t get to learn more about it. I felt we were really teased with her backstory and then it never got fleshed out.
3. THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH KAEDEN HART!
Final Thoughts:
This was a good end to a great series.
Final Rating: 4 stars
Thank you to Booksirens and B.A. Lovejoy for the opportunity to read this book. The opinions expressed above are my own, honest opinions.
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