Second Star to the Right (No.3)

When I first chose a book to review, I was choosing out of about three options. This book stood out to me because its title was a quote from Peter Pan, a Disney movie that I had watched a few times when I was younger. I read the blurb on the back of the book and learned that it was indeed a Peter Pan retelling. I was curious about how the story would differ from the movie.
At the start of the book we are introduced to Peter Pan, a 14-year-old-boy who is faced with the threat of growing up and being forced to give up stories because his parents need him to start earning money. As he is pondering this, a fairy comes and asks him why he is sad. He is whisked away to Neverland where people never have to grow up. If he had stayed a moment longer, he would have been there for the moment his parents agreed he could keep his stories if he worked with his dad.
Personally, I found that the start of the book was quite slow which made it hard for me to get into the story. However, I pushed through until the end of the book which is when most of the story happened.
One of the key points that is mentioned in the book is that Neverland is a place where children never have to grow up.
I liked that the relationships in the book were different from most books. Making Wendy and Tigerlily have feelings for each other helped with Wendy’s character development because it helped her find out who she really was instead of the person she was forced to be in London. I also found it really interesting that there was a darker side to Peter Pan and a lighter side to Captain Hook. Making the two characters connected really helped the storyline because it made me as the reader think about how this relates to the wider world. For example, sometimes people push away the dark emotions that they are feeling to try and pretend like they are fine. Instead of going away, these emotions tend to build up until the person can’t handle it anymore. This is what we see with Peter Pan: his built-up emotions that he has been hiding create the character Hook. I would have liked to see more of Hook being good and how some of the more bloodthirsty pirates react to this. I wouldn’t say that I care about these characters, but maybe I would if the book was longer and there was more time for character development (especially for Peter).
I found Peter Pan and Captain Hook being connected the most interesting element of the book. It tells us that sometimes people who act like everything is going their way have a darker side and people who have done bad things might not be fully bad on the inside.
Although I enjoyed some aspects of this book, I only recommend books that I love and would 100% read again. If I was going to recommend it, I would recommend it to people who like Disney retellings or to people who like to see LGBTQ+ representation. I would describe it as being an interesting Peter Pan retelling with a darker side than the original story. It was interesting that we got the point of view of many characters instead of just one or two, however I think that the book was too small for this to have worked well.

- Lotte is 15 and lives in Christchurch.