“Wendy, Darling is a daring, gothic re-envisioning of everything we think we know – and an important, vivid adventure.”

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

Wendy, Darling is a A.C. Wise’s reimagining of what happened to Wendy Darling in the years and decades after she returned from Neverland.
We meet Wendy again at the opening of the book, a wife and mother with a daughter of her own and a traumatic past that included time spent in an Insane Asylum. One night she enters her daughter’s bedroom just in time to see her precious child be stolen away by Peter Pan who is looking for a new Wendy for his tribe of Lost Boys. She knows that the only way to save her daughter is to follow them to Neverland , and rescue her from the clutches of the capricious and sometimes malevolent Peter.

Neverland is not the paradise she remembers however, many of her old friends have disappeared and there is a mysterious darkness at the heart of the island, Only by defeating this will she be able to free her daughter and take her home.

This is a dark take on a familiar tale, but I enjoyed it. I found the character of Wendy compelling and really enjoyed how the author wove together two timelines so that we learned about her past in the asylum and her relationship with her brothers, husband and best friend as well as the adventure story set in Neverland as she tried to save her daughter Jane. This is a book I would recommend to fans of the original Peter Pan tale, or more recent retellings like Christina Henry’s Lost Boy.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

 

Reviewed by:

Annette Jordan

Added 18th August

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Annette Jordan