Madness in Wonderland (ARC Copy Review) (Part 1 - Overview)
Hello, all. Welcome to this ARC review of a book that was not in my wheelhouse.
After reading “I’m Not A Supervillain”, I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into with Mindy LeMieux’s Madness in Wonderland. This was going to be Romantasy that made zero pretense of being a Fantasy story. If the writing style of that short story wasn’t already a big clue, LeMieux spells it out in this book’s subtitle:
A Steampunk Wonderland Clean Romance Novel
Nevertheless, I wanted to give this a look. I want to see Romantasy improve, and a Romantasy that openly professes Romance to be its focus seemed a good place to search for a good one. Besides, good storytelling is good storytelling. I figured there’d be something to appreciate here.
And, as it turns out, there is. This book clears that standard of quality that Lindsay Buroker set with Fire and Fang. It delivers an internally consistent, emotionally believable Romance that does not implode the moment one takes the Fantasy elements into account. The tone is well-suited for the type of story being told. LeMieux works in a theme that’s tied to character growth and the overarching plot. (Granted, I have my criticisms about the execution, but there’s more positive than negative here.) This is a book I genuinely would recommend for Romance fans looking to get into Fantasy.
Now, for the disclaimer: I was provided a free, digital copy of this book by Ms. LeMieux for the purposes of this review. I am legitimately considering buying a copy for my own bookshelf, though. I think my lady might like it.
All right. With all that established, let’s get into the thick of things.
STATS
Title: Madness in Wonderland
Series: N/A
Author(s): Mindy LeMieux
Genre: Romantasy
First Printing: September 4th, 2026
Publisher: Self-published
SPOILER WARNING
Mild, unmarked spoilers for Madness in Wonderland will be provided throughout this review. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labeled sections. I will keep the first paragraph of any given section spoiler-free.
STRUCTURE
This review’s going to need four parts.
Today (October 14th)
Premise
Rating
Content Warning
Genre
Prose & Tone
Wednesday, October 21st
Character
Worldbuilding
Wednesday, October 28th
Plot
Theme
PREMISE
Courtesy of the Amazon Kindle e-book page, we get:
Ex-personal trainer Maddie Upton seeks revenge on the jerks who sabotaged her promising career. She's laid low in Oregon for a year, and payback is mere hours away.
Her perfect vengeance plans were on track until she fell into a steampunk Wonderland with a giant chessboard that makes people disappear and corsets she can't lace by herself.
Enter Simon - genius mechanic and chronic flirt - who needs to get his sister out of prison. Maddie needs a way out of this maddening place ASAP. She'll help him with the jailbreak; he'll help her get home. Simple enough.
But Wonderland isn't simple. Besides the charming mechanic she's trying not to fall for, there's a secret mastermind using Maddie in their own revenge scheme, and a hidden Jabberwock she's prophesied to handle alone.
She doesn't have time to save this maddening world she didn't ask to fall into, much less become romantically involved with Simon (whom she didn't intend to fall for).
But each sexy smirk and moment he makes her heart pound has her questioning what she really wants to win: an avenging lawsuit, or Simon's heart?
Reaction
Nothing to really say here. LeMieux delivers exactly what she promises here.
RATING: 8/10
Was this my kind of book?
Not even close. Oh, I wouldn’t mind killing 90 minutes watching a film adaptation, but this is not the kind of thing I’d want to stare at my phone for several hours to read.
However, I cannot name a single point where LeMieux mislead me (or anyone else who might read this) about the true nature of this story. This is a lighthearted Romance that happens to be set in the Fantasy world. This book is not marketed as a Fantasy narrative, leaving the audience to guess whether it’s actually (or allegedly) a Romantasy. Nor, at any point of the story, does LeMieux promise us some epic saga or thrilling danger. She doesn’t even pretend that there will be Enemies to Lovers drama. Even someone who goes into this book completely blind will realize exactly what kind of story this is before Maddie even gets isekai’d to Wonderland.
This book succeeds on its own terms. It is a lighthearted, fun beach read that even people with little interest in Fantasy can immerse themselves in. There’s a lot of focus on positive feelings, and there’s never a point where the narrative demands that we take it more seriously than the tone itself would suggest.
Frankly, there’s a lot in here that I feel certain other Romantasy authors should emulate. The fact that the book is honest about the romantic drama we can expect is one aspect of it. However, there’s also the fact that Maddie is allowed to be wrong. One of the things that makes this story so satisfying is that Maddie genuinely does need to grow and change. This ties back into the theme and is an important part of her getting her Happily Ever After. The development is more than a little rushed, yet it makes logical sense and has real emotional weight to it.
If you are looking for a Romantasy that’s more about fun Romance than any high-stakes Fantasy drama, I heartily recommend this book.
CONTENT WARNING
This book has violence that is limited and family-friendly, very limited swearing, and no horrifying imagery or extreme peril. There are no sex scenes of any kind, and only limited sexual references.
The most mature content within the story is sexual harassment, which is part of Maddie’s backstory and is shown in a flashback. While this has been a difficult and life-affected experience for Maddie, what happens in the flashback is honestly very mild. It’s limited to the kind of comments that might seem harmless without the full context. (The narrative itself acknowledges this, as a tertiary who is with Maddie when she is harassed is flattered by the attention, whereas Maddie is furious that the guy harassing her is taking a cheap shot while she’s with a client.)
That being said, the way that LeMieux handles the flirting and feelings of attraction between Maddie and Simon has a rather interesting impact on the ...
GENRE
Clean
LeMieux heavily advertises this book on being clean Romance. She makes it clear that she doesn't just mean that her books are free of pornographic content. A lack of excessive swearing and violence are also presented as features to look forward to.
I'd say that she’s right on the mark. This book is clean by two of the three definitions we previously discussed:
There's zero pornographic content.
The swearing and violence is very mild. It's certainly nothing that would traumatize the typical preteen who's capable of reading at this level.
That said, I do think there's something to consider regarding the non-graphic sexual content: the flirting, the attraction, the kissing, and the outright make-out sessions.
During one of the bursts of discourse on Substack about clean fiction, I recall seeing multiple articles arguing that Christian fiction doesn't need to be (or shouldn't be) clean fiction. One went a step farther than ever that. I didn't read the article in question, but based upon the title and the preview available in the thumbnail, it seemed to be arguing that a lack of explicit content is not the same as a lack of excess. More precisely, it was pointing towards the longing that is used as a placeholder for pornographic content and highlighting that this could itself be spiritually corrosive.
Again, I didn't read the article. I don't even recall the title or who wrote it. I'm just relaying the impression I got from a thumbnail. The reason I bring it up here is not to argue the point as begin valid or invalid. It's to acknowledge that, if such an argument used Madness in Wonderland as its example, I would see where it was coming from.
The amount of page space dedicated to describing non-graphic sexual content is considerable. Making out is described as taking multiple minutes on at least two occasions. There's a plenty of oogling each other's bodies. A lot of the reactions Maddie has to being in Simon's proximity also sound like sexual responses rather than more general excitement.
What I'm saying is that, while there may be no pornography, the sexual tension is the thickest of any book we've reviewed since Notorious Sorcerer. If you are seeking clean fiction as a matter of preserving your own spiritual integrity, you may want to evaluate how well you can handle this sort of thing before picking up Madness in Wonderland.
Romance
LeMieux doesn't play games with the audience. The attraction between Maddie and Simon is front and center from the moment they meet. While their relationship doesn't drive the drama, the romantic entanglements of other characters do, and Maddie's feelings for Simon arguably do influence the climax. So, yeah. This is indeed a Romance.
Fantasy
Technically, LeMieux did not advertise this book as Fantasy. That's still what it is. Her "steampunk Wonderland" is a Fantasy setting, and the rules of that Fantasy world are a major driver of the plot.
PROSE & TONE
Voice
Madness in Wonderland is written with the same prose one would expect in a Contemporary Romance novel. This doesn't read like a story set in a fantastical land. Furthermore, the dialogue makes it seem like the characters aren't taking any of the conflicts seriously. The narrative prose doubles down on this.
I have criticized this sort of this heavily in the past. In this case, I think it's actually an appropriate stylistic choice. Even more so than The Elf Tangent, the way this story is written lines up perfectly with the story being told.
This isn't some existential struggle against energy vampires, evil gods, or a Death World. Maddie is showing up in a a place with a political schism that has been the status quo for quite some time, with no evident consequences if it were to be continued indefinitely, and has to help resolve that issue to get home. No one will die (well, except maybe her) if she fails. So, no, this isn't a story that needs us to take it seriously in order for it to work.
LeMieux does dial up the stakes in the last third of the story. When she does, though, she locks in. There's less banter and flirting. When the potential for death does surface, the story plays it seriously. It's possible to forget for a moment that this is a Romance where a Happily Ever After for the Main Couple is guaranteed.
And on the point of the prose specifically, Maddie is explicitly a character from our world. It makes perfect sense for her narrative voice to read like a Contemporary Romance, because she is supposed to be native to our contemporary environment. Granted, this excuse doesn't fly for Simon's POV, but at least he is consistent with other Wonderland characters. It's not like anything in this iteration of Wonderland would rule out characters having mindsets similar to our own world and era.
Though, on that note ...
Wonderland
When Maddie and Simon first meet, LeMieux plays into the nonsensical nature of Wonderland, with Simon reacting to her various questions with obtuse answers. I liked this. I’m hardly an expert on Alice in Wonderland, yet from what I’ve heard from reviewers (i.e. reviewers commenting on how faithful various film adaptations are to the book), this sort of nonsense is what is expected in Wonderland.
The thing is, LeMieux does this only two or three times across the entire book. Otherwise, Maddie has no trouble communicating with the people of Wonderland.
I understand why LeMieux chose not to have every bit of dialogue devolve into Maddie getting tongue-tied because Simon or another denizen of Wonderland refused to give straight answers. That would eventually get very annoying and would bog down the pacing of scenes. At the same time, introducing it early on and then barely touching it feels a bit forced. If LeMieux didn’t want to have this be a running thing throughout the book, maybe it would have been better to cut it entirely.
Women Writing Men
Simon is very clearly a man written by a woman for the purposes of a Romance. I maintain that women can write men and men can write women, yet this is one of those times when the psychological divide really shows. The removal of the overtly sexual elements hides things a bit better than what we saw with Vorik in Fire and Fang, yet because yearning and desire are such a big feature in this story, it’s hard to ignore that Simon doesn’t come across like a man in his twenties (particularly not a man who has so much testosterone coursing through his veins that he’s ripped despite living a fairly sedentary life as a mechanic). At best, he reads like a fifteen-year-old who just hit puberty and is noticing that girls are pretty for the first time.
That being said, I will cut LeMieux slack for this one, for two reasons.
First, it actually is somewhat plausible that Simon has never experienced any attraction towards a woman before. There’s a throwaway line in the text about him not getting out much because he spends so much time tinkering with machines. So while his various scenes of yearning made me question if LeMieux remembered how old he was supposed to be, at least this makes sense from a character perspective.
Second, we come back to the aforementioned idea of this book succeeding on its own terms. This isn’t a badly written Fantasy that expects to be spared of criticism because it calls itself a Romance. This book is honest about what it is and who it’s written for. We aren’t meant to find this realistic or to juxtapose a hyper-masculine ideal against the heart of a pure maiden. We’re just meant to enjoy two young people swooning over each other.
(Of course, having said that, I guess I now need to be consistent about my standards and stop criticizing books aimed as predominantly male audiences for cheap yet clean fanservice involving female characters. My apologies to Dan Abnett, Francis Lebaron, and Paul B. Thompson.)
COGS AND WRENCHES
Next week, we’ll dive deeper into the characters - or, to be more specific, the leads and their romance - Madness in Wonderland. I had a surprising amount to say here. One of the things I really like about this book is that you can see how elements that cause problems in other Romantasy stories fit in perfectly here. I’d like to take time to highlight those elements. They could potentially point to how other Romantasies could be fine-tuned in the future. We’ll also take a moment to talk about the worldbuilding, while we’re at it.
If you’re looking for more Romantasy content, you can also check out my free web serial, A Chime for These Hallowed Bones. It’s an Enemies to Lovers story that’s Alchemized meets Fourth Wing, featuring necromancers in a Desi-influenced setting. Chapters 1 through Chapter 11 Part 2 are currently available, and Chapter 11 Part 3 arrives this Friday.
Thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoyed what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
