3.5 
 Unfortunately this book wasn't as good as I was expecting. While I loved the more gothic feel, there were some things that really bothered me... 
 Full review can also be found on: Paein and Ms4Tune's Book Blog 
 My opinion of this book has see-sawed all over the place. At one point I even quite convincingly hated it, I almost loved it in the middle and towards the end, I knew I wouldn't be reading the rest of the series and found it easy to ignore two of the most annoying factors. 
 Firstly; Cockney. Just, FYI, not sure this accent exists much anymore. Living in the UK, no one I know from London speaks like this...and every single 'luv' grated on my nerves, if it had been spelt correctly I wouldn't have minded. I was once reading a feed and someone had written in their accent, 'Sorry but it's the way I speak' they added. No. How you speak doesn't change the way the word is spelt when you come to write it. (unless you're dyslexic and spell phonetically, but they made no mention of this). This is an annoying stereotype that needs to go away. Dick Van Dyke has a lot to answer for. As does James Masters (Spike from Buffy, though I always thought he was from Manchester). 
 Back to the topic at hand. I do have one question, if their line came from a love child AND if her mother grew up in foster homes with no relatives around how on earth did they know their family line went back to Alice?! 
 Secondly: LOVE TRIANGLE ALERT!!!!! The worse kind. DISLIKE! Not even going to delve into this. 
 Aside from these annoyingly prominent plot points, it was all rather clever. The what and the who. The how and the why, though she seemed more a branch of Goth in her attire rather than Skater, but the outfits seemed reminisant of Tim Burtons' Alice and quite enjoyable, aside for the colour combinations... 
 And I'm pretty happy with the wrap up. It can be read as a standalone which I intend to leave it at, mainly because the blurb for the next one delves into love triangles again. 
 I am disappointed that the Hatter didn't have much of a role. I do enjoy a good mad.