Review: White Rabbit - Abigail Rose-Marie

Genre: literary/contemporary fiction Published: Union Square & Co, July 2026

Actual rating: 4.5/5 stars

“I am still stuck on January 26, I say. Everything after that never happened because Dad left. White Rabbit was never performed, and Dad is still not here to turn the page. I am stuck on January 26 and I do not know how to get to January 27.”

Stories told through the point of view of children experiencing traumatic events that they’re far too young to grasp are a different kind of tragic and unsettling to me. In the hands of the wrong author, it’s an exploitative disaster waiting to happen. In the hands of the right author, you get gems like David Vann’s Aquarium, Emily Spurr’s A Million Things and (more on the fantasy-side) Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. White Rabbit falls firmly in that latter category. This was an incredibly moving and memorable story, with an even more memorable young protagonist.

The Story:

The yellow house perched on the crumbling edge of Massachusetts Bay is filled with grief. It used to belong to the poet Sylvia Plath, and her ghost still quietly watches the current inhabitants going about their routines. Before, there were 3: mom, dad and 11-year old neurodivergent Penelope. But dad is gone, and both mom and Penelope retreat into their own inner worlds. That is until Penelope is forced out of all her routines and away from the yellow house on the bluff, on a road trip in search of her dad.

What I loved:

We spend the entirety of the novel inside the mind of Penelope; a neurodivergent 11-year-old doing her best to make sense of the events that are happening in her life. Her unique outlook on the world – ghosts and Alice in Wonderland references and all – carries the story. It endears you as the reader to her, whilst also keeping you on your toes, as its clear that despite her best efforts, Penelope is not a reliable narrator. The heartbreak comes in exploring the world through her eyes, whilst slowly piecing together what is truth and what is fiction.

As mentioned; in the wrong hands the unreliable-narrator – especially when combined with the neurodivergence aspect – can easily become exploitative or insensitive. White Rabbit is neither of those things. To me, this felt like an incredibly authentic portrayal of the framing that Penelope would create around her fathers absence.

You will likely put the pieces together faster than Penelope does. Yet rather than becoming annoying, this added to the dread and anticipation for me.

I don’t want to say anything regarding the ending, other than that the emotional pay-off was well worth it for me. I’m not a “book-crier”, but if I were, I’d definitely shed a tear with Penelope here.

What I didn’t love:

My biggest point of critique is aimed at the marketing team, not the story itself. I don’t understand the choice to classify this as a horror novel, as I don’t think that label will help it reach the right audience. This happens a lot, specifically when literary fiction novels include elements of ghosts or magical realism. This does not make them “horror” or “fantasy” respectively, and marketing them as such creates unfair expectations. White Rabbit was also distinctly less “ghostly” than I hoped based on the synopsis. I’m happy with what we got instead, but it was somewhat different from my expectations.

Speaking of the ghosts brings me to my sole substantial critique of the story. I didn’t feel like all of the different motifs blended together naturally. Most prominently, there’s the ghost of Sylvia Plath, the various allusions to Alice in Wonderland and The White Rabbit play, and the colors red and blue that shade Penelopes perception of her mum. I loved all of these individually, but I sometimes felt they didn’t belong in the same story. Had the author cut back and focused on developing one of these (preferably Sylvia if you’d ask me), it might have made for a more streamlined experience.

Many thanks to Union Square & Co for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.