After Oz

The ending makes this a 3.5 star book instead of the 3 stars I was originally going to give. This was less of a retelling than I was expecting. There is very little Dorothy Gale. It's more about a female psychologist who gets drawn into Dorothy's orbit after she is accused of murder and sent to an insane asylum. She is drawn because her cousin (conveniently Frank Baum) is a newspaper reporter sent to cover Dorothy's murder trial. The only part I disliked was the “pious” narrator. I wanted to punch them in the nose.

I just finished After Oz by George McAlpine and here are my thoughts.

Did you ever wonder what happened to Dorothy after she returned from Oz?

Dorothy can describe her whole adventure in exact detail. Trouble is, she is coming across as delusional and witchy. It does not help that her memories of killing the witch coincide with the death of a recluse that lives not too far from the farm Dorothy was living on.

Her story and the death of her neighbor, earns her a place in an asylum. Dr Evelyn Wilford, a psychologist, goes to the asylum to talk with Dorothy and she doesn't believe for one second Dorothy committed the murder.

It's one heck of a reimagining that focuses less on her adventures in Oz but on the aftermath of coming home. It was a really interesting story that worked pretty well as a follow on from the original tale.

I thought Dorothy came across a lot older than her age in this book and she felt like she may have been a borderline sociopath maybe. It's just how she came across to me. She didn't seem scared of where she was but annoyed at having to be there. She wasn't even really the main attraction. Evelyn was and it was a real gamble writing a book about Dorothy and not having it from her POV. I kinda liked it personally.

The narrator was good and I enjoy the overall tone of the book.

Definitely glad I read it!

4 stars. Thank you to @netgalley and @dreamscapemedia for my gifted ALC

Out now! Run, don't walk!