Spellbinding read, but ending left me a little sad.

This was a difficult read for me. I was so excited when I first got this, because the plot line sounded utterly fascinating. Alice is a young British girl whose father made his fortune and fame with a graphic novel about a half-demon bartender named Mister Tender. The graphic novels take the nation by storm, and then two classmates of Alice become obsessed with Mister Tender. They even claim to have received letters from him. Instructions. Telling them that for them to get their heart's dearest desire, they will have to pay a price - they will have to kill Alice. They attack her one night in the park, and only a good Samaritan's being in the right place at the right time kept her from bleeding to death from the twin girls' vicious stab wounds.



Years later, Alice is all grown up and living in the States. The attack on her life has completely transformed her family. Her parents divorced, her mom took her and her brother to a new country. Her mother got a twisted second-hand 15 minutes of fame as the mother traumatized by her daughter's trauma. When the intensity of what her Alice barely survived started to fade, and people didn't sympathize quite so much with her mother anymore, suddenly Alice's brother became ill and required their mother's constant supervision and care. Alice's father stayed in Britain, but years later was killed in a stabbing that was blamed on a political cartoon he'd drawn for a newspaper.



From an inheritance from her father's death, Alice purchased a small coffee shop, moved away from her mother and brother, and tried valiantly to figure out how to live a normal life. Her dedicated hours at the gym and abhorrence of any and all sharpened objects are proof positive that she has not been successful in moving on with her life. Then, all of a sudden, her constant vigilance turns out to be with cause. First an ex-boyfriend's drug dealer shows up to blackmail her, then a fatal incident in her own home, and on and on until we feel that Alice has definitely fallen down the rabbit hole. But it's not Wonderland she's found, but a deadly community dedicated to keeping Mister Tender alive, and Alice well in sight.



She questions herself constantly, not knowing how much of what she's experiencing is real and how much is her PTSD and frightened brain making mountains out of molehills. But one thing we know for sure about Alice is that she is extremely driven and determined. She clings to life - her life - with every fiber of her being. She's willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to find the answers she needs. She feels certain - and the reader does, too - that when she finally has all the answers, she'll at last be able to move on with her life.



The story was breathtaking in so many places. The reveals and plot twists were amazing, and often gut-wrenching. I was utterly fascinated, completely unable to put the book down until I had finished it. But when I reached the end, I felt so dissatisfied. All this mystery and intrigue that led up to a conclusion that took only a few pages to write out. It felt so...sudden. So cold. I felt like the upstairs renter was never fully realized as a character. I felt like the trip to Britain to meet the twins who nearly killed Alice was almost a throw-away. It was so small in the overall story, and I felt like it could have been so much more. I wanted to see so much more of what happened to those two.



Overall, I really enjoyed the read. It was the ending that left me feeling deeply unsatisfied. I think it could have easily taken 50 pages to conclude all the points the author touched on, but with more detail and depth. That would have been amazing.