THANK YOU Katrina Monroe for bringing some LOST GIRL magic into this story!

Peter Pan is one of my favorite stories! I usually quite like most of the retellings and alternate versions of the tale too. So I guess it comes as no surprise that I enjoyed this one as well. BUT one of the really cool and unique things about this book was the very prominent strong female factor. I have to admit, I was always slightly disappointed that there weren't any lost girls, and I think Monroe did an awesome job at filling this gap in All Darling Children. Even if some of these girls weren't technically thought of as such throughout most of the story. The girls in this book were fierce and cunning, and not all of them were entirely likeable, but they were keen and ferocious.

I loved the depiction of Peter Pan in this story! One thing that is common in any Peter Pan tale, new, old, or in between...he is arrogant through and through. I like how Monroe took that and twisted it into a new darker perspective. This Peter was familiar in many ways, the crowing, the games, boyish charm, and such. But everything about this book was darker. Peter was something to be feared. Everything about him was feral, a brutal savage whose selfish, bloodthirsty desires are grim enough to shape the world around him, and its inhabitants.

I found the Darling family so interesting! I kind of loved that they were a mess. I had never really thought much about their time after Neverland, and as disturbing as it could be at times, I thought Monroe came up with a super fascinating story line for them. I only wish we would have got a tiny glimpse at what Neverland would have looked like after a brief time after the end of this book. Not going to be spoilery here, but it's driving me a little mad not knowing if the atmosphere changed there after time, or if everything Madge went through and her new role in the world changed her in ways that we've seen before. History repeating itself and such. Part of me hopes for the former, but wouldn't the latter be such a wickedly delicious and fitting continuation of this story??!!

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

I read Barrie's book, as well as watched Disney's Peter Pan movie, so long ago that I honestly can't remember all details. Still, this retelling looked interesting, and so I decided to give it a try.

Madge, Wendy's granddaughter, lives a not-so-happy life with her grandma, and keeps trying to escape to find her mother who may or may not be in Chicago. One night, when she finally gets a chance to leave, she gets spirited to Neverland: another chance, one to learn more about her family, her mum, and everything Wendy never told her. However, Neverland quickly turns out to be more terrifying than an enchanted island full of fairies and forever-boys. Clearly not the fairy tale a lot of children and people think about when they hear the name of 'Peter Pan' mentioned.

There are interesting themes and ideas in this book: what the boys' rituals involve exactly, what happened to Jane, the slow disintegration of Neverland, what happened to Hook and Tiger Lily... I've always liked the "Hook as an ambiguous villain" approach, and here, he's definitely of the ambiguous kind, since it's 1) difficult to know if he wants to help or hinder, and 2) he's no saint, but Pan is no saint either, so one can understand the bad blood between those two.

I was expecting more, though, and had trouble with some inconsistencies throughout the story. The time period, for one: it seems Madge is living in the 1990s-2000s—welll, some very close contemporary period at any rate—, which doesn't fit with the early-1900s of the original story. I know it's not the main focus, yet it kept bothering me no matter what: there's no way Wendy could still be alive, or at least fit enough to bring up a teenager, and she would've had to give birth to Madge's mother pretty late in life as well. And since there's no hint that 'maybe she stayed in Neverland for decades, which is why Jane was born so late,' so it doesn't add up. Also, Michael is still alive at the end? How long has it been? He must be over 100 or something by then.

None of the characters particularly interested me either. I liked the concept of Pan as tyrant, but I would've appreciate more background on this. And while Madge was described as someone who was strong enough to make things change, her actions throughout the story didn't exactly paint her in that light; it was more about the other characters saying she was like that, or telling her what she had to do, and her reacting.

I found the ending a bit of an anticlimax. Things went down a bit too easily (I had expected more cunning, or more of a fight, so to speak?)... though props on the very last chapter for the people it shows, and for being in keeping with the grim underlying themes of Neverland (kids who 'never grow up', huh).

Conclusion: Worth a try, but definitely not as good as what I expected from a Peter Pan retelling.