“With one last look at Peter, Wendy stood and turned to face the shadow. “He doesn’t need to save me.”” -Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas
Interested in a spoiler free summary? Check out my Annotation of this book.
Review
Author: Aiden Thomas and J.M. Barrie
Title: Lost in the Never Woods
Category/Type: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Subgenre: Legends/Myths/Fairy Tales
Publication Date: March 23, 2021
Number of Pages: 384 pages of story text; including acknowledgements
Series (if applicable): This book is not a part of a series
Wendy Darling is a volunteer nurse in the children's ward at the local hospital. She just graduated high school and maybe has aspirations to be a pediatrician but being a nurse is practical and respectable and cheaper. Things seem like they're going well for Wendy but she can't shake the thoughts about that time she wandered into the woods five years ago with her little brothers only to reappear six months later, alone, and with no memory of what happened in between. She also can't stop telling the children at the hospital stories about a certain boy who never grows up... When Wendy gets in an accident after a mysterious shadow lands on the hood of her truck, she meets someone vaguely familiar who needs her help and will force her to confront the past that has disappeared from her mind.
This is a tale of trauma and grief, love, and the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It’s heartbreaking and magical. It's Peter Pan like you never imagined it could be.
Personal Thoughts
WARNING: May contain spoilers
This was an interesting, serious, and dark retelling of a relatively light-hearted and nonsensical children's story. Lost in the Never Woods isn’t just a retelling of Peter Pan. It takes a story many of us cherished when we were younger, in a variety of versions, and forces it to grow up with us. I found the original Peter Pan story, which I didn’t read until I was an adult, to be one of the strangest books I had ever read. Thomas uses this strangeness to craft a new tale out of the foundations. Points from the original story are so cleverly woven in that the meld beautifully.
The story does an amazing job of grappling with grief and trauma, invoking Peter and his lost shadow as a powerful metaphor. Problematic points from the original tale, such as the mermaids are removed and Wendy's domesticity isn't forced: she looks after children not because she's female and it's her lot in life but because she's an older sister and wants to become a nurse or pediatrician. The story did seem to drag on a bit and then wrap up abruptly but overall was I found that it was an impactful reimagining of a tale many of us hold dear.
Final resting place: I borrowed this from the library and it has been returned.