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A review by planetlibrarian
God of Neverland by Gama Ray Martinez
1.0
*Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review*
DNF'd @ 32%
I want to start off by saying that the concept of this book is great. I loved that Michael was the focus, instead of looking to Wendy as the main character like a lot of Peter Pan retellings tend to do, and I liked the idea of a secret organization investigating and interacting with all sorts of deities and supernatural creatures. I read and really enjoyed Peter and the Starcatchers growing up, so reading the summary put me in the mind of a similar idea but for an older audience. Where things went very wrong for me was the execution of this book. The plot was hard to follow, it picks up years after Michael has already left the organization that tries to pull him back in for one more job, so there is a lot of context here that gets skipped over. The characterization is not strong, and the dialogue is hard to get through. The author throws a lot of concepts, like Peter Pan being a god known by another name, at readers very quickly with little explanation that hints are a very interesting world the author has crafted, but is overall not easy to follow or get into. There's no sense of why this organization is so invested in Peter, who's gone missing, or than even Michael himself, who's never been back to Neverland, would truly care enough to be pulled back into something it was made very clear he left for a reason. All in all, I liked the concept, but the finished product is too rough to tell a fun story i'm willing to stick with.
DNF'd @ 32%
I want to start off by saying that the concept of this book is great. I loved that Michael was the focus, instead of looking to Wendy as the main character like a lot of Peter Pan retellings tend to do, and I liked the idea of a secret organization investigating and interacting with all sorts of deities and supernatural creatures. I read and really enjoyed Peter and the Starcatchers growing up, so reading the summary put me in the mind of a similar idea but for an older audience. Where things went very wrong for me was the execution of this book. The plot was hard to follow, it picks up years after Michael has already left the organization that tries to pull him back in for one more job, so there is a lot of context here that gets skipped over. The characterization is not strong, and the dialogue is hard to get through. The author throws a lot of concepts, like Peter Pan being a god known by another name, at readers very quickly with little explanation that hints are a very interesting world the author has crafted, but is overall not easy to follow or get into. There's no sense of why this organization is so invested in Peter, who's gone missing, or than even Michael himself, who's never been back to Neverland, would truly care enough to be pulled back into something it was made very clear he left for a reason. All in all, I liked the concept, but the finished product is too rough to tell a fun story i'm willing to stick with.