Tim's Reviews > Alice Isn't Dead

Alice has been dead, or at least presumed dead, for quite some time. Her wife Keisha has mourned her. She has attended therapy. She has tried to control her anxiety, but it’s just too much... especially as she starts to see Alice in the news. Not as a feature of the broadcast, or as a newscaster, but as just a person in the background crowds always staring straight at the screen. Keisha decides to go on a road trip, as she’s now sure that Alice isn’t dead. 

Written by Joseph Fink, one of the two creators of the popular Welcome to Nightvale series. Alice Isn’t Dead feels like it could very well take place in the same universe... except that Nightvale is funny, whereas Alice is dead serious. Bad things happen here. There’s a fairly high body count and some of those deaths are rather gruesome. It’s not explicit like an extreme horror novel, but it’s very clear what is happening to the people who have the misfortune of meeting one of the things along the road. 

This book owes a great debt to David Lynch. Much more so than Nightvale even. In Nightvale the unexplained weirdness is so over the top and comical, where here it is threatening and just close enough to reality to make it uncomfortable. The Thistle Officer who changes her name every conversation reminds me rather unnervingly of the "Mysterious Man" from Lost Highway. I mean that in a complimentary fashion as he’s my favorite character in any Lynch film... but it adds to the overall uncomfortableness of the book 

Let’s talk a moment about anxiety. Keisha suffers from it, and let me tell you, if you do too be prepared for a potential panic attack because Fink gets it like few other authors do. I felt myself starting to experience it quite frequently not during the monster encounters, but when Fink would describe the feeling of anxiety.  

“It is often said that bad experiences are like nightmares. But what Keisha noticed most was how real it was, how she couldn’t escape its reality, how she would never be able to convince herself she had remembered any part of that evening incorrectly.” 

That... that feels too real.  

Overall I really enjoyed this one. I wish I could say I liked it more but I have two very big issues with it. First, frankly, the villains toyed with the characters too much for things that have managed to work in the shadows/survive so long. There were so many times where I felt it just seemed off that Keisha wasn’t flat out murdered. Also, the ending... no spoilers, but I’m not a fan of the approach Fink takes. It almost feels like the ending to a much different book. 

In closing: I enjoyed it for what it was. I wish I had loved it. Still, I’ll take enjoyable. 3/5 stars.