Ensnared

Overview

Ensnared closes out A.G. Howard's Splintered trilogy, picking up in the aftermath of a chaotic confrontation at Alyssa Gardner's high school prom. Having accepted the strange inheritance of madness that ties her to Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, Alyssa emerges from that ordeal with a clearer sense of who she is and what she's willing to risk.

With the rabbit hole sealed off, Alyssa can no longer simply fall back into Wonderland. Instead she must cross through a looking-glass realm, a distorted mirror version of the world she knows, populated by netherlings twisted into violent, unstable forms. Her goal is to reach her mother and Jeb, both trapped by the machinations of the ruthless Queen Red, and to finally settle the power struggle that has shadowed the series from its start.

As the trilogy's conclusion, the novel pulls together threads of romance, family loyalty, and self-acceptance while raising the stakes of the fantasy conflict to their highest point, forcing Alyssa to choose between two worlds and the people she loves in each.

A Gothic Coming-of-Age Story

Beneath its Wonderland trappings, the Splintered series has always used fantasy as a vehicle for a more grounded story about mental illness, inheritance, and identity. Alyssa's "madness" functions as a metaphor for the hereditary burdens passed down through families, and her arc across the trilogy traces a path from fearing that inheritance to claiming it as part of who she is. Ensnared brings that arc to its resolution, asking whether the traits a person is born with can be reconciled with the life they choose.

The novel also continues the series' practice of reworking Lewis Carroll's imagery into something darker and more visceral. Familiar Wonderland figures and settings reappear reshaped by menace and decay, in keeping with a broader trend in young adult fiction that reimagines classic children's literature through a gothic, horror-inflected lens. That approach has drawn a devoted readership among fans of dark fantasy and fairy-tale retellings, while also placing the book at odds with readers who expect Wonderland stories to stay closer to their source material's tone.

Why Ensnared Has Been Challenged

A recurring complaint raised against Ensnared centers on the argument that its combination of sexual content and graphic violence makes it inappropriate for the shelves of school libraries serving teenagers, regardless of the book's literary intentions. Some parents and community members reviewing the title have pointed specifically to scenes of bodily harm and mutilation among the netherling characters, arguing that the intensity of these depictions crosses a line more typical fantasy violence does not. Others have flagged the novel's romantic and sexual content as unsuitable for younger readers who might encounter the book as part of a series they started at a lower reading level. In the catalog tracked here, Ensnared has been challenged or restricted in 2 states and 2 districts. Taken together, these objections reflect a broader tension between defenders of the book's dark fantasy genre conventions and those who believe its content warrants stricter age-based shelving or removal altogether.