Little disappointed, really thought I would love this however it just didn’t work out. Was slow and found it to be one of those I had to almost make myself finish, I just wish it was faster paced.

It is with heavy heart I have to say it was very mediocre and I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I think I will just pass on Aidan's books for now.
The cover is stunning though!

Thankyou to netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book. This is the first Peter Pan retelling that i have read and i liked it. It was entertaining and had some good twists.

There are many Peter Pan retellings in the world, I will read any I spot and this one is one of the most interesting i have seen. Many Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Review:
I really Enjoyed Cemetery Boys by Aiden, so Seeing a peter pan retelling was too much to resist for me

Plot- It was a massively entertaining plot and read well. I appreciated there were some great twists and the writing style was fantastic. Pacing however is where I dropped a star from the review. It seemed to slow a bit too much in the middle and made me struggle to stay engaged, but once it picked back up it was great.

World building- really well done and developed throughout.

Characters- The characters seemed extremely complex, including the side characters, and it was nice to see this depth in a Children's/YA book. They all had their moments and the development and relationship between them made this story shine. The romance was minimal, which makes sense and it was really refreshing to see this as a very minor subplot instead of a main driver.

Overall:
A well written and intriguing Peter Pan retelling that I personally loved and will shout from the rooftops as one of my favourites.

Wow what a fantastic book with twists and turns all over the place such a good book I would definitely recommend it

I went into this one blind, I decided not to really read or focus on the blurb too much. Imagine my absolute excitement that it was based around Peter Pan & Wendy!!

I really enjoyed reading this, there were some parts in the middle that dragged a little for me, but the end of the book was brilliant - I loved the way that Peter, Neverland and the Lost Boys were portrayed in this and really wound up loving it!

Peter Pan retellings aren't very common, so I was excited to pick this one up. I preferred it to Thomas' Cemetary Boys, but ultimately, this book felt like a lot of filler and very little plot. It had a strong beginning and a decent end, but everything in between felt like a desperate attempt to get from point a to point b that was both plodding and repetitive.

Lost in the Never Woods is a hauntingly beautiful Peter Pan retelling. It's a story about loss, grief and love with Wendy at the centre of the plot.

Five years ago, Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, and months later Wendy alone returned with no recollection of what had happened. Then children start to disappear and Peter, a boy who Wendy thought lived only in her stories, asks for help rescuing them.. Wendy is forced to confront her past in order to find them.

I was quickly drawn into the mystery surrounding the disappearances of children and Wendy's past. Although the plot moved quite slowly at times, I was completely captivated and found the end very emotional. Aiden Thomas has definitely established themselves as a must read author for me!

I loved the idea of a Peter Pan retelling, but not so much the execution. The characters felt a bit flat and I wasn't really connecting with them. The plot was good once it got going, but started pretty slow which was kind of frustrating. Not a bad book, just not one that got me excited!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I ended up really enjoying this book!
I was a bit worried about reading it as I didn't actually enjoy the authors previous work, The Cemetery Boys.
Luckily I enjoyed this one a lot more.
If you are looking for an interesting Peter Pan retelling I would definitely recommend this book!
Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

As always, I love fairytale retellings. Unfortunately, a good chunk of this book was a slog to get through. Not much really happens. It's especially unfortunate because the last 20% or so is very, very good. I almost cried, in fact. It brought this story up from a 3 to.a 3.5, which I'm going to round up to 4.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book.

In Lost in the Never Woods, Aiden Thomas crafts an achingly beautiful story about love and loss and, most importantly, finding yourself in the midst of it all. It's refreshing to see Wendy be the main focus, to have her be a fully realised character. This book is a true testament to Thomas's skills as a writer and a storyteller.

When the children start to disappear from Astoria, a coastal town at the edge of the woods, everyone’s attention is turned to Wendy Darling. Five years earlier, she was found in the woods with no memory of the time she’s been gone and no knowledge of the fate of her brothers, who went missing together with her. As the town searches for the lost kids, Wendy is reunited with an impossible friend who forces her to relive her past...⁠
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Lost in the Never Woods is an exciting retelling of the Peter Pan stories. It is a novel full of action, humour and plot twists. The characters are vivid, and the plot keeps the reader involved in the story. The book has elements of a coming-of-age story, as Wendy is eighteen and has to decide on her university degree. She also has to face her childhood trauma, and her struggle is a fascinating theme of the novel. The disappearance of her younger brothers affected Wendy and her parents very profoundly, as they tried to deal with their suffering in different ways. John and Michael seem to be a part of their lives, casting a shadow of grief and guilt on even the most mundane activities. The return of Peter Pan forces Wendy to analyse the past she would rather ignore and brings back memories she craves and fears at the same time.

I found this book a little difficult to get into at the start (possibly because I'd just finished Cemetery Boys and I had really hoped this would be a sequel) but once I got into it I couldn't put it down. I liked the different take on a classic tale and feel that it would be a great story to use in class when teaching about adapting well known tales. The story line is intriguing and I was not expecting the twists that came up along the way. The book deals with kidnapping and missing children so it is definitely not one for younger children. Although it would potentially be a good way to teach about stranger danger.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with this eArc!

A bit different to Aiden Thomas’ previous work, however I loved it just as much!

I was really excited for this book because I loved Cemetery Boys so much but unfortunately I had issues with the pacing of this one.

The concept and the twist on Peter Pan sounded great but it just felt like there was no real sense of urgency to find these missing children. Then all of a sudden the pace picked up and things moved too quickly in the end.

I am aware that, although published after Cemetery Boys, this was actually written before so is technically a debut. I feel that as a debut it shows a lot of promise and, having loved Cemetery Boys, i am confident that the authors writing has improved and so I can't wait for their next release.

“She didn’t know when or where, but her brothers and Peter had been there. Peter. A delirious laugh bubbled in her throat. Her Peter. Peter Pan. He was real. And she needed to find him.”

Publisher: Swoon Reads (US), Pan Macmillan (UK)

Release date: 23rd March 2021 (US), 4th August 2022 (UK)

Pages: 384

Representation: BIPOC best friend.

Trigger warnings: Child death, kidnapping, murder, panic attacks, PTSD, Nail biting, blood, memory loss,parental death mention, car accident, alcohol abuse.


Summary: Wendy Darling was 13 when her brothers went missing, and 13 ½ when the police found her alone in the woods with 6 months of missing memories. Now she’s ready to head to college, until she meets Peter. A kid that knows her name, even though they’ve never met before, and now he’s claiming to be her Peter. Peter Pan. The impossible boy she used to tell John and Michael about. One problem; he’s older than he ever was in her stories, and he seems to be getting older by the day. When more local kids start going missing, it brings up bad memories for the darling family, it’s up to Wendy to figure out what’s happening to these children, and how she can help Peter Pan before he grows up for good.

Lost in the Never Woods is the perfect novel for those that flew away to neverland, but had to come home and grow up.

Rating: 4 star.

A perfect reimagining of a well loved fairy tale. It mixes both the Disney story that popularised it, and the original tale in a way that I absolutely loved.

We never get to see Neverland, and I’m not upset about it. Taking place in the modern day, in the USA, makes it all the more Jarring and meaningful when things start to go wrong. It’s so far from your first impression when you hear the words ‘Peter Pan’ that it puts you almost on edge, which sets a perfect mood for the rest of the book.

I loved the overall, it was definitely an original take and was certainly entertaining. As a plot driven book it was a little slow at times, but never enough to seriously impact my enjoyment. The ending was genuinely a complete surprise to me, a little anticlimactic but I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming. It definitely left me satisfied!

I wanted to give Wendy a hug. She clearly had PTSD, and was extremely traumatised. It was written in a way that made us empathise with her, and you could see how much the entire thing meant to her. She was a shell of the bossy little girl we think of, but she was still very much Wendy Darling. Headstrong and brave and willing to do anything for her brothers.

Peter was such an utter delight. I had to put my hand over my mouth several times to stop myself almost squealing because of how much I was enjoying his characterisation. He was the equivalent of sunshine on a page, even when he was scared or suffering. I will never be able to stop thinking about Thomas’ interpretation of him.

Overall, it was a fun, playful yet heartbreaking read that I’m going to be thinking about for a long time.

Its shining glory: Peter's childlike innocence and wonder shines through in every interaction he has. It was pure joy that leapt off the page. He was so wonderfully written, and every ounce the character we all know.

Its fatal flaw: At times it was a little slow and over-descriptive. This took away from the tension and pulled me out of the story at times.

Read this if: You love retellings and reinterpretations. You’ve got an open mind and honestly? You just want more Peter Pan in your life.

Skip this if: You expect a story like the Disney version, and aren’t open to things being bleak. You like action-packed, fast paced reads. You don’t want to read a retelling.

A dark and haunting retelling of Peter Pan which shows Wendy in a new light - as a girl who has been stuted by her family who is just surviving the best way she knows how. This was a slow buring read that was perfectly paced and much more emotive than I thoughht it would be. A really incredible read.

This is not the Wendy Darling you knew. In this dark and troubled YA contemporary fantasy, Wendy doesn’t remember what happened when she and her brothers went missing five years ago, all she knows is that she came back and they didn’t.

Wendy is haunted by the gap in her memories and the gap left in her family by her brothers’ absence. She is volunteering in the kids’ room at the hospital (because caring for children helps her fill some of that void) when she learns another child has gone missing. Her anxiety worsens, and she begins to dissociate - when she returns to herself, she finds drawings she made of a twisted tree and a familiar face. She doesn’t know who the boy is—except she does, she know he’s Peter Pan, the boy from her stories, the boy who isn’t real.

And then she almost runs him over driving through the woods in the dark. And he knows her name too.

This is a quiet, slow story, with a terrified protagonist used to making herself quiet and useful as a way to hold her family together and assuage her survivor’s guilt. This is the role Peter plays: reminding Wendy of innocent joy and wonder, but he also brings a sense of safety in the way he treats Wendy’s fears as real, when she’s spent so long convincing herself they’re irrational. Both Wendy and Peter take care of people, in their own way, and as the story unfolds they take care of each other.

While I would have liked to see more from the supporting cast of characters, I didn’t mind the slow pacing, because this is a story about emerging from grief and trauma, and that isn’t a fast-paced or even process. Wendy is not bright and engaging, because circumstances have not allowed her to be. She is surviving. That was the special thing about this book for me - reading about a girl who is just trying to make it through. I wish I could give it to my teenage self, so she could feel as seen as I do now.

Don’t go into this expecting another Cemetery Boys, it is a very different story with a very different atmosphere. But it might be for you if you like slow, sombre books that remind you while there is pain, there is also hope and joy.