Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir - 9/10

What happens when adolescent Wendy Darling, Dorothy Gale, and Alice Liddell meet in the care of a physicist who believes each girl has really traveled to other worlds?

This book explores how such unusual experiences may have shaped these young girls and what it would be like trying to return to living their lives in this world. There are a couple flashbacks to illustrate how Weir decided on the development of certain traits and attitudes, but he mainly trusts his audience’s familiarity with the basic origin stories of the characters and focuses on developing a new adventure. He definitely adds his own flare and world-building in addition to the previous lore, and the story is clearly for an older audience than the original books, but the characters and associations are recognizable and I think it was generally well executed.

*Not to be nitpicky, but this is very much “inspired by” rather than 100% faithful to the original source material – (for example, the Oz lore used seems to be based on the film adaptation rather than the original novel) – which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth being mindful of if you’re sensitive to those sorts of discrepancies.