Alice is near breaking point. Floods have left her beautiful dream home a damaged mess, her step children’s lack of respect is giving her migraines and, worst of all, her husband is giving her no support to lean on. Her life is slowly spiralling out of control.When Alice’s daughter, Anne Marie, repeatedly falls victim to aggressive vandals, Alice finally can take no more. She decides to take … take control of the mess that has become her life, and finally frees herself from the chaos that has been bringing her down.
Freedom, however, isn’t as sweet as Alice first thought it might be. She finds herself yearning for something she can’t quite put her finger on. In her quest to find it, Alice finds herself turning to alcohol.
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Alice is a novel written by K. L. Loveley and published in 2017. I read another work by this author last year and enjoyed her writing style, plot, and character creation, prompting me to pick up one of her earlier books. Prior to the book’s opening, Alice’s husband cheated on her and left her quite unhappy. She put herself through school, raised their two children, and kept her focus on the future. A few years passed before she remarried and joined her family with his 4 teenage children. His wife had died, leaving a broken and disjointed family who never healed properly. Alice chose not to be the wicked stepmother, but unfortunately, their father wasn’t very strong at parenting. The stage is set for us as readers, and we can’t help but feel compassion for Alice.
In the first part of the book, Alice tries to handle everything that goes on in their new home, caring for both their aging parents, and being a mother to her own grown children who at times need her support but for the most part have become wonderful human beings. By the middle of the book, Alice can’t take the stepchildren’s awful behavior and leaves for 6 months to see if she needs a more permanent break. By the third part of the book, Alice’s life has fallen apart and she’s drinking daily to cope on her own. Except… she’s possibly gone too far in trying to remove herself from her surroundings.
For me, Loveley excels at creating emotional connections with characters. She knows exactly how to warm a reader’s heart or to anger their spirit. Alice was amazing and too understanding. Her husband was a weak fool; while he stepped up sometimes, he ultimately was afraid to hurt his children and therefore, he never disciplined them properly. All 4 of his children were monsters, especially when they were in their 20s and still living at home without jobs or paying anything to support the home. I wouldn’t have lasted as long as Alice, and if they were my stepchildren or children, they would’ve been given enough time to change their behavior, or they’d be kicked out WAY sooner. One interesting question the book poses: should teenagers / young adults be working while in school and if they do, should parents take a portion of their wages to teach them how to manage money, et al. Great concepts to address!
Lovely also shows the deep spiral one can fall under if they allow substances to make the day go by more easily. We watch Alice go from a glass of wine to a half-bottle to an entire bottle, and finally to shots and hard liquor multiple times per day. When she’s hospitalized, it’s awful to know the damage she’s caused to herself, especially through the alienation from everyone who loves her. Thankfully, she’s saved for a small time by someone new, and it’s this friendship which closes the book in a way that satisfied this reader. I really enjoy Loveley’s work and will definitely read her next book when it’s released.