Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.58 Stars For as long as she can remember, Gwendolyn Allister has never had a place to call home—all because her mother believes that monsters are hunting them. Now these delusions have brought them to London, far from the life Gwen had finally started to build for herself. The only saving grace is her best friend, Olivia, who’s coming with them for the summer. But when Gwen and Olivia are kidnapped by shadowy creatures and taken to a world of flesh-eating sea hags and dangerous Fey, Gwen realizes her mom might have been sane all along. The world Gwen finds herself in is called Neverland, yet it’s nothing like the stories. Here, good and evil lose their meaning and memories slip like water through her fingers. As Gwen struggles to remember where she came from and find a way home, she must choose between trusting the charming fairy-tale hero who says all the right things and the roguish young pirate who promises to keep her safe. With time running out and her enemies closing in, Gwen is forced to face the truths she’s been hiding from all along. But will she be able to save Neverland without losing herself? (goodreads.com) Something you should probably know about me is that I love Neverland stories. I love the island, I love the mystery, I love the characters, I love the warnings, I love the fairies, the mermaids, the flying, the pirates - everything about Neverland I hold in high esteem. So, don’t be surprised if you see a great many more Peter Pan retellings reviewed on this site. I might even make a list of my favorites at some point. Okay, about today’s book: I was somewhat disappointed in this novel. When I started reading it I got really excited because “yay, a book about Neverland!”, but as I read through it I found it to be lacking in the wow factor. It did redeem itself a teensy bit with the heartbreaking, but lovely ending, but overall, not one of my favorite reads this summer. One thing I didn’t like was that this is, as the tagline says, not the Neverland I knew. Sure, the island was very much the same as it has always been with it’s changing geography, magic, and flying boy, but it was many shades darker than I was expecting. The island itself is almost a character in many retellings and it was sort of like that in this, but evil. Way, mega, creepy evil. And so were some of my favorite aspects of the story. The mermaids have always been nasty to everyone but Peter, so that didn’t surprise me. Tinker Bell, however, bothered me. For one thing, she could talk, for another, she was an irritating character. On top of all that, she wasn’t even named Tinker Bell. Captain Hook was pretty much everything I expected him to be in a YA novel, and I was anticipating many of Pan’s new traits as well, but - my word! Peter Pan has never been so disturbing. Not even in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, where some weird stuff happens. He was vile and gross and I wanted to slap him. Yuck. Something I did like was the “other story” at the beginning of each chapter. This was a story told in brief tidbits right before each chapter started and it was poetic and interesting, as well as extremely sad. It is about a boy during World War I and what he goes through as a soldier. At first it doesn’t seem to connect to the rest of the book, but it does and it was more interesting than the actual novel, I think. Even though I was entertained by this book and the writing was decent, I really can’t think of many complements to give to it. I’m sorry, book. I really wanted to like you, but Peter was a creeper and Hook was way off the original book. The main character, Gwen, wasn’t so terrible, but she was kind of an idiot. And she needed a lot of rescuing. And I couldn’t connect to her at all. So… y’know, she wasn’t great. Part of why I didn’t like this, might have been because of all the darkness. I’m used to Neverland being portrayed darkly, but this was nearly pitch. The creatures, the tone, the complete lack of any humor, and the many, many deaths. Like I said, I’m used to a darker Neverland, but this was too much for me. All together, it was entertaining to some extent, but it was hard to read at a lot of parts. It wasn’t what I was expecting. I only recommend it if you are a die-hard Peter Pan fan and even then, I’m not sure you’d like it. Thanks for reading, be sure to tell me what you think in the comments below. Do you have any good books you think I should read/review? How about terrible books you think I should read/review? To get off the computer would be an awfully big adventure, but I suppose I must… Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21518344-unhooked?ac=1&from_search=true
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