Wonderland by Zoje Stage

 

Wonderland

by Zoje Stage

The Moreau-Bennett family is moving from New York City to the wilderness of upstate NewYork's Adirondack Mountains. Orla feels completely unprepared for life in the middle of nowhere, but she has agreed that after her retirement from a successful ballet career that it is now her husband, Shaw's, turn to follow his muse and to become the great painter they both believe he can be. With their two children, Eleanor Queen and Tycho, they move into their new home during the oncoming winter season.

Shaw and Eleanor Queen both start to have a deep connection to the place, sensing something in the surrounding area that they believe is trying to communicate with them. Orla doesn't experience the same thing, but she does find the place to be oppressive and sinister. When the family starts having hallucinations their idyllic dreams are replaced by nightmares. They find themselves confined to the house and property. Whenever they try to leave in order to get away from it something weather-related gets in their way. Gale force winds, several feet of snow, and ice flows, to name a few. The hallucinations become reality and Orla mistakes her husband for one of them, leading to a tragic end.

Eleanor Queen is the key to it all. When Orla finds a picture of what the property used to be, she realizes what is happening and slowly comes to terms with what she has to agree to in order to make things go back to normal. With her husband dead and Tycho missing, Orla agrees to let Eleanor Queen fuse herself with the entity that is causing all of their torment. It (She) just wants to live.

This book was a long slog. It was more than a slow burn, it inched along with the same type of scene playing repeatedly, with only the weather catastrophe as the variable. I wanted to love it. It wasn't a bad book. The characters were mostly interesting, except their behaviors became predictable after awhile. One thing that bothered me was the magic-like elements of the haunting, which were too farfetched for my tastes. Hallucinations I'm fine with, but it started to become a bit too unrealistic. It was good, but not great. I have to give Wonderland 3 stars.