scijessreads

This one is a difficult book to categorize and rate. It takes the story of Peter Pan and turns it to the dark side, exposing the shadows and the dirt and the true hardness that comes from saving “lost” children and bringing them to an island of dreams and nightmares. It falls into my recent love of villain origin stories. Because learning how a canonically “bad” person actually ended up on the dark side makes their motivations and lives that much more nuanced and less one-note.

We start with Lou, a young girl that adores her father, is wild, and never quite fits in with what her mother wants. She feels a sort of freedom with Jay, her friend that comes in through the window (and always seems to be causing trouble between Lou and her mom). As she grows up, Jay is forgotten when Lou turns her attention to her sister Rosie and starts turning toward a life rife with the expectations of others as to what she should be.

Lou ends up on the island that Jay is from, and is drawn into a journey to find a way back home, to Rosie. She is at odds with Jay and the other lost children. To find her way home, she ends up trying to find Peter, whose magic controls the island and who is the only one that knows how to reach the stars to leave and return to the world Lou belongs to. As she journeys, her memory is slowly slipping away, forgetting what she is trying to do, or who she is trying to find. And Jay is trying to fight back against Peter, for all the wrongs he puts at Peter’s feet. For all that he feels for Lou, and how he even sees himself as part of the island.

I don’t want to give away anything, but as you move through the story, it just gets darker. You start to realize how evil and good are maybe sometimes the same thing. How methods may differ, but the end result is the same. How one lost person can either find themselves and free themselves or lose themselves entirely.

In the end, I was left adrift. Lou’s story was finished, but Jay’s was really just taking off. His is the story of the evolution of a villain. Hers is the story of a lost soul trying to find a place to belong.

*I received a free ARC from Netgalley and the publisher to read and review. All opinions are my own.