The Liberation of Alice Love
Abby McDonald
Mousy London lawyer Alice Love gets her identity stolen and finds her true self in this rocky tale of trust, personality makeovers, and a lying globe-trotting thief. “She didn’t leave me any worse off, in the end,” Alice says of Ella, a work pal who makes off with Alice’s credit card info to set up a new life in Hollywood. But before the ruse is over, Alice retaliates by morphing into a compulsive stalker, taking on Ella’s identity, and discovering that a lot of little lies add up to a whole lot of fun. The transformation nearly costs her the love of a good man, but Alice comes (nearly) to her senses by the time she corners her arch-frenemy.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, other than the blurb sounded really good. It turned out to be one of those books that once I picked it up i couldn’t put it down.
When Alice’s identity and life savings is stolen she embarks on a journey that changes everything for her. She begins to step out of her comfort level and discover who the real Alice is. Along the way she meets Nathan the investigator that helps her to try and find Ella, and discover just why she stole her life. She discovers which friends are her real friends, what she wants out of life isn’t what she has, and that while Nathan starts out as someone she has to deal with he becomes someone much more important.
This is one of the best books about a journey to self discovery that I have read. As I read Alice’s journey I couldn’t help but reflect on the similar journey that I took regarding my own self discovery, while my identity hadn’t been stolen I had lost a part of myself. As I read her journey I was able to see how she grew as person and even though there were times that she made decisions that were very questionable, to her they made sense and was something that she had to do.
As I got to the end I wondered how it would all end, and I have to say that while the end didn’t suck and it made sense in a way it left me very unfulfilled as someone that has just spent hours reading and being invested in the story. There was no clear resolution for what she decided to do in the end, which took away from the story, at least for me and definitely affected my opinion of the book.
Grade B-
