I know I was so close to finishing this one but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. What started off as a very promising dark fairy tale just kind of spiraled into a bumbling mess. It's clear that Albert is drawing a lot of influence from Angela Carter and Grimms Brothers, but the story never really has any teeth to it like those of these authors.

Hell, it can't even commit to killing off a character whose sacrifice would actually weigh on Alice. I don't know if it's trying to be subversive of the typical dark fairy tale, but it just feels spineless.

Alice was such a hard character to follow. She's needlessly antagonistic and, while I know that's supposed to be her character flaw, it leads to really weird situations. The cop scene felt so out of left field, especially with the shoehorned in message about white privilege. It's an important lesson to be sure, but it has no bearing on the actual story or characters, never comes up again, and doesn't serve as anything more than a shallow attempt to touch on real life issues. 

While the pacing in the first hundred pages or so was decent, it slowed down immensely when reaching the halfway mark. So many events could have been condensed or written out entirely. The story just kept spinning its wheels for over a hundred pages before the "bad guys" just happen to catch up and kick the story into gear again.

Was really looking forward to this one, but I just don't have the strength for it.