A.C. Wise

This was a fun page turning read, and a worthy sequel to Wendy, Darling. For a slightly dark alternative retelling of Peter Pan, I think it would be hard to be beaten!

I really felt for Captain Hook and his pirates, with his character arc very satisfying and poignant. I wish there was more light shed on the workings of Neverland and what had happened to Pan after the first book. The world still seems very vague and inscrutable, and hard to connect with and with the characters, although I suppose that’s to highlight how strange and mysterious Neverland is (or maybe there will be a 3rd book in the series that explains everything?? Here’s hoping!))
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This is a fantastically varied and haunting collection. With a fair number of long stories, untraditionally formatted stories, and shorter works, there's something here for every lover of ghost stories and horror stories. I normally prefer more traditional works, but even so, some of the more experimental forms here made me fall in love with their stories, which I never would have expected. I think my favorites ended up being "How the Trick is Done," "The Last Sailing of the 'Henry Charles Morgan' in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw', "How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party," "Exhalation #10," "The Nag Bride," and "The Ghost Sequences"--but in all truth, I really did enjoy this whole collection. A number of the stories here (some mentioned as my favorites) felt like whole worlds, and could easily be novels in themselves if Wise wanted to extend them.

Either way, she created such a complete world in each of these stories, and there was so much variety, I simply fell in love with this book. I look forward to reading more of her work, and would recommend this one to any lover of horror stories or ghost stories.… (more)

I accidentally read this series out of order; this book does not suffer from being read before book 1 (Wendy, Darling) but I've not yet read book one, so don't know whether the reverse is true.

There are many inexplicable happenings, and the story carefully steps around explaining many things. One can make assumptions about how the story got from here to there, but there is also the possibility that the author has another book planned in the set. Although, as there is a somewhat happilly ever after epilogue, this might not be the case.

James/Captain Hook is never redeemed in the 'real' world, and I like that. Getting out of Neverland and the malign influence of Peter Pan did not make James a nice person. And he never quite gets out of the trauma responses.

Setting this in London in 1939, and including a character who came back from The Great War very damaged allowed the author to draw some fascinating parallels between war and Neverland, and explore themes of trauma and maladaptive responses. All five of the characters who get significant plot time are dealing with past events that impact negativelyon their present.

This is not a hopeful book, and despite the epilogue, I would say it does not end in a happy way.

content warnings: Drug abuse and Addiction, Death, Violence, Mental illness, War, Body horror, and Ableism… (more)

I was personally never a fan of Peter Pan. I always found him to be too fickle, spoilt, controlling and sometimes downright abusive to romanticise him or Neverland, so I tend to really enjoy any retelling where Peter Pan is not portrayed as a hero. Wendy, Darling fit right into that category, but at the same time did so much more by giving Wendy a voice and allowing her to tell her story - and this time it is not a bedtime story for children.

Wendy, Darling was beautifully structured, alternating between Wendy's first time in Neverland, her experience of life in London after returning from Neverland, and her return to Neverland to rescue her daughter Jane, whom Peter has kidnapped to become a new mother for the Lost Boys. We also get to see things from Jane's POV, as she tries to make sense of what is happening to her and work out how to survive Neverland and return home. I really liked this structure, and I thought it worked very well to really show all that Wendy endured while slowly peeling off layers of Wendy's memories to reach the truth of Neverland, Peter and the darkness lurking within.

This book takes some really dark turns, and I think after reading this no one will be able to look at Peter Pan or the Lost Boys in quite the same way again. Together with Wendy, we readers are brought to questioning everything we thought was true. But what is real and what is fantasy?

Wendy was a fantastic character. She is a survivor, having experienced suffering and abuse for years following her return from Neverland. Unlike her brothers, Wendy has not forgotten their time in Neverland, but she is disbelieved by everyone until she is finally committed to an asylum where treatments are brutal and dehumanising. The chapters recounting Wendy's time in the asylum were particularly harrowing, especially because of all the bullying and abuse she suffered at the hands of the staff so maybe be cautious in approaching this if that might be triggering for you. Knowing her pain gives so much more weight to Wendy's decision to go back to Neverland as a grown woman to save her daughter and is a testament to her strength.

Even though Wendy, as the main character, carried the show, all the characters felt really well developed, including the minor ones. I am all about the characters, and these ones really delivered! From Wendy's brothers to the Lost Boys, and from old Neverland friends to her new family, everyone has something to offer and I was totally here for it! Peter is of course a key character in this, and I really liked the author's take on him.

There were times when I got a bit frustrated as things seemed to be moving too slowly, but it somehow didn't feel as though there was an issue with pacing. The slower passages felt very deliberate, and especially in certain sections I could feel the characters' frustration, which I think was the point? The book takes its time, building a picture of all the characters bit by bit until we think we can see the whole of them... but can anyone ever do that?

Overall, Wendy, Darling is a wonderfully dark retelling that takes on a life of its own, almost independently from the original story, to explore very real and modern issues around misogyny, mental health, trauma and survivorship, family and many, many more.


I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.… (more)