**See this full review and more at http://bookbriefs.net**

The Looking Glass is a really interesting take on a re-telling. The girls name is Alice, and she ends up on the other side of a mirror, but that is about where the similarities stop. Jessica Arnold has created a completely new, creepy, intriguing and utterly fascinating world in her spooky hotel. I loved watching Alice explore it, both through the diary she finds and through running from room to room. I felt Alice's pressure the whole book, just hanging there in the air. I felt like I had to keep reading because if I didn't then Alice would run out of time to figure out whatever she needed to figure out to get out of that house and back to the real hotel. I loved that she was transported to basically an alternate mirror world of the hotel where she was vacationing with her family.

I will admit that I was kind of confused when I started reading the book, but this is the kind of book where you just go with it. Alice is just as confused as the reader, if not more, and you are trapped in her world. You only get to know what she knows, and there is something cool and exciting about that kind of writing. I thought Jessica Arnold did a wonderful job with the detail in this book. The hotel sprung to life before my eyes while I was reading. The little girl that no one in the real hotel could see never failed to give me goosebumps and shivers. I felt like the book was a little slow at the start but it was probably just for setting the scene purposes. As the book got going it did start to pick up momentum.

I loved watching Alice try to figure out what was happening to her and just how she could fix it. And at the same time we got to learn the story of the hotel and of Elizabeth. It was a cool dual sotryline going on. Reading The Looking Glass was a real experience for me. I could easily see this book translating into a movie. It would be creepy and intense and pretty awesome. The Looking Glass was really unique. I haven't read a re-telling quite like this one.