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ourxstorybegins 's review for:
I Kissed Alice
by Anna Birch
This book was a little tricky for me! I consumed it so fast and had a good time reading it, but I think the “enemies” part of the enemies-to-lovers dragged on longer than necessary, and the ending was a little underwhelming?
Rhodes and Iliana are the main characters, and they cannot stand each other. Due to some stuff that happened in the past, Iliana is constantly angry at Rhodes and assumes that she always has bad intentions. Rhodes is just mad about the way that Iliana treats her (and is very good at being bitchy when she wants to be). Little do they know, they’ve been collaborating on an Alice In Wonderland-inspired webcomic and consider each other their best friends (and of course, have been falling in love).
Some Big Thoughts:
- Wowie their identities could have come out way sooner. Even once one of them realizes, they don’t tell the other and just let the other one think they’ve been ghosted by their best friend. It was my big cry moment in the book and the fact that the character who knew didn’t come clean faster still makes me mad.
- I truly wonder what their friendship would have looked like without Sarah between them. Sarah is Iliana’s best friend and Rhodes’s roommate and is the one who brings the two of them together, but their jealousy also has a lot to do with why they don’t get along. I wasn’t a big Sarah fan from the beginning of the book, so just....really curious.
- I think Birch does the online friendship thing really well. While I have never fallen in love with someone I was chatting with online, I have developed surprisingly deep friendships (now at 30, my online writing friends from high school continue to be some of my very best friends), so I think this was good.
- Side characters and storyline! A+! I loved Rhodes’s brother, the art competition was the perfect setting for everything to blow up, and I would’ve been perfectly happy spending more time on those things
I think my main issue is that there wasn’t much time to wrap things up at the end. I think there could have easily been another chapter or two of story that could’ve been added to the ending without it feeling dragged on that would’ve also helped to wrap things up.
ESCAPES RATING:
Enjoyment - 7 | Start - 8 | Characters - 5 | Atmosphere - 8 | Plot - 8 | Ending - 4 | Style - 7