Blog Tour Review of Alice, I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.

Melanie Benjamin lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons, where she is working on her next historical novel. Visit her website at www.melaniebenjamin.com.
 
My Review:
This was totally different than I had expected. For starters, it is a slow beginning and hard to get into. Yes, it is a story about the person who was in Alice in Wonderland (my favorite child hood story), but I still couldn’t get into it. To me, that makes for a sad review, because I don’t like turning out a negative review! I have to be honest and say that this is not one I would read again…that is just my opinion, though.

But, there are readers out there, I am sure, who would like to read this book. The author has talent and it’s evident that she put alot of time and effort into mixing the fact with the fiction. For that, I give the author two thumbs up, but for the book itself, I feel I can only, in my personal opinion, give it three stars.

You can purchase your copy of this book by visiting Amazon.com here.

*A copy of this book was provided for review by Pump Up Your Book Promotion*