~*~Appetizer~*~
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Heat Level: Spicy for sexual tension and sexual scenes
Her Mad Hatter follow the short, yet tension-filled romance between Alice Hu and the Mad Hatter. The beginning opens up from the view of a fairy godmother - Danika - whose duty is to serve the bad boys of our favorite fairy tales: Hook, the Bad Wolf, Gerard (Beauty and the Beast), and Jinni - a genie from Arabian Nights. As the five men meet up for a yearly meeting, deciding whom to terrorize for the next year, Danika arrives to give them the good news - that she has finally happened upon ladies, finally granting her boys a well-deserved happily-ever-after. They all dismiss her, especially Hatter who has had more than his share of heartbreak cause by the numerous Alices that have been traipsed in front of him - none more treacherous than Alice Hu...
Pastry chef Alice Hu is celebrating a successful grand opening of The Mad Hatter's Cupcakery, the business that she had been working towards for what seemed like a lifetime. The name was all too fitting, considering her obsession with the story of Alice in Wonderland. Her own house is decorated much in the style of the fantasy world that she spent her whole childhood dreaming about; her bedroom devoted to the Mad Hatter character (Johnny Depp version over cartoon). Life, as far as Alice is concerned, has never been better...until the last customer of the day begs for the last cupcake in the display, her form of payment being a single, white business card containing only a picture of a white rabbit and the words 'Rub Me'.
Despite her doubt, after a glass of wine, her curiosity gets the better of Alice and she follows the directions, only to find a familiar white rabbit in her room who seems bound and determined to take her away to the land she had always loved...to the only man who had held her heart since their first, brief meeting when she was thirteen.
However, things in Wonderland are hardly as wonderful as Alice had always hoped. To her horror, her long-loved knight in shining armor has been reduced to a shattered shell; his sanity which had been slowly trickling away over time was now gushing through the broken dam that had held it for so long. Unexpectedly, Hatter's state of mind was affecting all of Wonderland, making it a dark, dreary, and deadlier place than usual. Alice was everyone's last hope for survival and, hopefully, recovery.
Unfortunately, when her handsome Hatter looks at her, all he can see is her great-grandmother (also named Alice) who betrayed him in ways younger Alice could never begin to imagine. With her own secret pains weighing her down and a three day deadline to win the hearts of both Hatter and Wonderland, Alice finds herself in the fight of a lifetime to heal the scars her ancestor left behind on Hatter's heart as well as the ones upon her own.
Written with a mastery of mouth watering, sexual tension as well as emotional ride akin to a roller coaster, Marie Hall gives a new slant to our favorite fairy tales. As is proper for a fairy tale, the ending is bittersweet yet still satisfying in the end. The only problem I had with this ebook was quite a few editing errors but that could be just the copy (hard to complain when I got it for free). Minus that, this was an excellent book that I strongly suggest to those with the fetish for fairy tales.
