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. ( )

I have no words, so this might be hard.

Wow.
What a story.

I love retellings, and this was a dark one at it's finest, keeping the mythology of Pan and really turning it into what it could have been - something dark and seedy and awful. It did it masterfully.

And at the core, it was a story about love - the love for your companions who you choose to do life with, and the love a mother has for her child.

Absolutely incredible. ( )

I'm not sure how I feel about this novel. Overall it was a good read, just took a while to get there. For me, I thought there was too much introspection and description. I wanted more action which came in bursts every now and then. The action bits were fantastic. I thought the ending came too soon as well. I wanted to see all the things after in both Neverland and London! (won't say it so I won't give away the ending)

So, I felt 3.5 was a good rating for it. I'd still recommend it to someone that enjoys classic story rewrites/continuations/alternate versions. ( )

Such a fascinating story line! I obviously like fairy-tale retellings and am truly trying to stay away from them but this one caught my eye. So, this is a grown-up Peter Pan story about Wendy. The Wendy who returned home from Neverland and was unable to let it go or to forget Peter, Captain Hook, the Lost Boys and the rest. Her brothers, Michael and Peter, were able to move on, one more successfully than the other. Wendy, however, remained confident in the story and was thus committed into an insane asylum in London in the 1890's. Not a good time. The story continues until Peter returns and takes her daughter to Neverland, who has no idea of any of the past history, and Wendy goes to collect her. Things aren't always as magical as we remember nor do they stay the same. ( )

The correct way to think about this book is as a character study of an early twentieth-century woman. The insights and thoughts into Wendy's psyche as she deals with her rage at the events that have befallen her, both in Never-Never Land and back in the real world. Her insistence on the truth of their happening gets her into trouble, and it is the most fascinating part of the book. Most children who visit a magical place quickly learn to keep it to themselves, but Wendy refuses to do that. The idea of a beloved magical character hiding a dark secret isn't particularly interesting; the return to Never-Never Land has been done dozens of times; and even the conceptualization of Peter as an abusive boyfriend isn't particularly insightful.

Plot: 3. Wendy attempts to rescue her daughter from Never-Never Land. The denouement is relatively straightforward; no surprises or twists, and doesn't give us any particular insight into Peter or Wendy. A decent ending for a fairy tale.

Execution: 4. The back-and-forth between present time and Wendy's past are nicely done. You get a lot of insight into Wendy at the right time, just when you've begun wondering exactly why Wendy is the way she is.

Character development: 5. Not only is Wendy beautifully fleshed out, but the characters around her are as well. Michael, the war veteran with PTSD, is especially well handled, and even the less important supporting characters, such as Wendy's husband and Tiger Lily, are given characteristics that make them spring off the page. Jane seems well ahead of her time with her scientific aspirations.

Scenes: 5. Everything is set up neatly and the writing is solid.

World: 4. Liberties are taken with Barrie's world that I'm not sure he would appreciate. His world - Peter's world - of boyish fantasy probably had its dark spots, but Jane and Wendy see through them into an almost Lovecraftian dark place.

Mostly I don't care for authors that write stories for characters that they didn't create, but the emphasis on how Never-Never Land affected the various characters, rather than being a cynical sequel, make Wendy, Darling an interesting exception, and well worth reading. ( )