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bellebookstitch666's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Forced institutionalization, Violence, Medical trauma, and Mental illness
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Animal cruelty, Torture, and Body horror
Minor: Bullying, Kidnapping, and Death of parent
vi_holmes's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Wise takes the story of the boy who refuses to grow up and found all the places to fill in and add lore and context in the most brilliant fashion!
The story bounces between the view points of Wendy and her daughter, Jane, who has been stolen by Peter from her room believing her to be Wendy. Demanding her to be. Wendy must venture to Neverland to rescue her daughter while battling the PTSD she suffers from her time in Neverland and more so from the aftermath of it.
Wise does an amazing job of depicting Wendy as a feminine heroine, battling mental illness while not letting that illness make her weaker for it, but rather more determined to protect Jane from the same fate. And bring an end to Peter's evil ways.
<spoilers below>
The scenery of the story is beautifully depicted, I felt captivated by the magical and dark world reimagined in this book. And there are so many amazing characters with so much depth, you will certainly fall in love with many, especially Mary and Ned!
I will say that there were parts that felt very slow to get to. However, I very much get the impression that this was intentional. It added so much suspense to the scariest and most mysterious bits of the story and honestly made it so thrilling when the pace suddenly picked up towards the end of the second act.
Also have to mention the LGBTQIA+ representation cause it is so amazing! I was struggling not to cry during those reveal scenes.
Definitely read all the trigger warnings that come with Wendy, Darling -- it is truly very dark and disturbing at times -- but I highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys dark fairytale retellings!
Graphic: Mental illness, Abandonment, Blood, Torture, Bullying, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Violence, and Racism
silvernfire's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Violence, Kidnapping, and Child death
Minor: Death of parent and War
bookmark3brodi's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Graphic: Pregnancy, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Blood, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Physical abuse, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, War, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Confinement, Gore, and Racism
elena2000rr's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Child death, Medical trauma, Violence, Mental illness, Bullying, Racial slurs, Blood, Emotional abuse, and Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Animal death, Racism, and Torture
Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Homophobia, and War
thebookworm_queen's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Moderate: Physical abuse, Racism, and Violence
abominablesnowaro's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Kidnapping, Misogyny, Violence, Gaslighting, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Animal death
Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Classism, Colonisation, Grief, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Violence, War, and Xenophobia
booksthatburn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
It's tempting to dismiss this version of Wendy as passive, inactive. Not very many things actually happen in one sense, and she spends most of the book not doing things, or talking in circles around the things she did as a child in Neverland long ago. But that rumination, that early passivity is the point, and it forms a sharp contrast with the last quarter of the book where she leaves to rescue her daughter, Jane, stolen by Peter nearly as soon as the book begins. It's about the time stolen from her by sexism and institutionalization, the agency take from her by men who dismissed her as a girl then as a woman, and the way that Peter in his ageless boyhood is an echo and a concentration of the forces that twist every statement of Wendy's into a way she must have been female and therefore mistaken. Wendy doesn't do much in an action sense but she makes the most of every moment she can, talking with Mary as they sew secret pockets into their clothing, plotting ways to get back at her tormenters in the institution.
Jane's sections feel more robust than the flashbacks to Wendy's time in Neverland, but they're tied together to illustrate Peter's efforts to treat Jane as literally interchangeable with her mother, brought there to be his "mother". He needs her to protect him and make it all better, but to never stand up or point out that his treatment of the other boys (and everyone on the island) oscillates from active abuse to petulant neglect. Because of adult Wendy's thoughts about her daughter we have more context for what Peter is trying to strip away from Jane, it's easier to notice what he's removing.
The narrative treatment of Mary White Dog in England and Tiger Lily in Neverland attempts to address some of the harm of the original by grounding Indigenous people as real with specific tribes and origins, not just something from Peter's imagination, while also showing how harmful it was to Tiger Lily and the rest of her tribe to be trapped by his whims on the island, discarded when he grew wrathful or bored. There's a contrast drawn between Mary knowing the tribe she's from while having an awareness of how much knowledge she lost by being removed from her homeland, versus how little Tiger Lily can remember since she's trapped in Neverland. Tiger Lily doesn't remember any other name for her tribe. Given Peter's penchant for renaming people, it's probable that "Tiger Lily" isn't even her original name in this version, though it's all we get.
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Racism, Sexism, Grief, Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, Toxic friendship, Domestic abuse, Vomit, Blood, Animal death, Child death, and Death
Minor: Torture and Death of parent
amz1006's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
I’m not really sure I would call this a feminist retelling like it was described, but there is certainly a level of intricacy to the women and their relationships in this book that often get left out of other books.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing. It took me a while to realize that what I didn’t really like was that it is written in the present tense and it threw me off a bit. Idk if maybe Wendy is just a really emotional person but the sheer amount of internal reflection that happened in this book was…a lot, especially for a book written in third person. I found myself skimming a lot of it tbh.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
CW for this book: graphic violence
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Racism
foreverbookwandering's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The first fifty percent of this felt really similar to Lost Boy by Christina Henry. I think the problem is there are so many Peter Pan retellings (don't get me wrong, I love that there are), that it seems easier to make Peter a dark character to contrast with the J.M Barrie and the Disney versions but it is harder to make him stand out amongst other dark retellings. This is obviously not exactly like the Henry version since for one, that one concentrates on the relationship between Hook and Pan and this one on Wendy and Pan but there are definitely similarities.
This book looks at two timelines, present and the past which focuses on Wendy returning from Neverland with her brothers who promptly 'forget' Neverland and at her insistence of its existence, have her committed. There are definitely trigger warnings for trauma and abuse during her time there and the book follows her journey in refusing to give up Neverland but still lead a 'normal' life and rebuild that relationship with her brothers, one of which has seen the terrors that come with being a soldier during a World War. Whilst there is a minor focus on family, the main focus is on the mother daughter relationship between Wendy and her daughter, Jane.
I am not sure on the Native representation in this as I am not Native but it does feel like their heritage becomes invisible. Wendy's best friend, Mary, is Canadian Indigenous but does not know much about her culture beyond that her name is Mary White Dog.
I didn't really fall in love with any of these characters and always felt a bit distanced from all of them. I am not sure if that's how you are supposed to feel with Wendy, who keeps her secrets close to her chest as they slowly come out throughout the book. I definitely preferred the second half of the book as it then felt different to Lost Boy and the characters came into their own. Whilst I think the ending did wrap everything up, it raised some questions that were never answered and whilst I understand that Wendy and Jane as narrators might not know all the answers there were still one or two things that confused me.
Overall, I think this is a decent book. I do love reading Peter Pan retellings and for that reason, it is hard not to compare them but if you love dark retellings you might like this one, it just wasn't for me.
Moderate: Bullying, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Physical abuse, and Violence