Alice and the Fly, James Rice’s debut novel, is a beautiful story on fear, love, family and friendship. The peculiar Greg tells you his exquisite, emotional and sometimes even dark tale in a very straightforward manner. The book is presented as a journal and its style is fascinating: it offers the reader a view inside the mind of a boy who desperately tries to avoid any form of social contact. The main character’s honesty can lead to situations which appear to be (unintentionally) funny to the reader but will also go straight to your heart. It shows the reader what goes on inside the minds of those who seem different, and shows us in a very touching way how one’s everyday life can be aggravated through a medical condition or a phobia. This debut certainly proves that Rice is a wonderful writer of whom we can expect great things in the future.