Review: Never Never

Never Never by Brianna Shrum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second Peter Pan retelling I've read in the last year or so, I think this one, I enjoyed a lot more because of how uniquely it centered James Hook and his rise from a Lost Boy to a feared pirate captain. Though I've spent months, if not years (well, I've only been on Twitter for two anyway) being mutuals with Brianna Shrum, it wasn't until very recently that I found out my library happened to have this book of hers, and I'm very glad I stumbled across it after all this time.

Here, Hook's story is beautifully tragic as he gets suckered into the charm of Neverland and then, after it becomes clear that he's not the perfect fit for this place, pigeonholed into the role of villain and forced to live there for the rest of his days. And he's not the only one - all the rest of the pirates and the Lost Boys, and of course Hook's love interest Tiger Lily, are mere pawns moving around the board at the whim of the Pan, pretty much. Though this version of Pan isn't quite so outright villainous as, say, the infamously iconic Once Upon A Time version, Shrum's Pan feels all the more sinister for how understated he is.

I rather wish there was a sequel to Never Never. Or, failing that, that it could've been the first in an anthology series where Shrum reimagines famous fairytale villains as tragic anti-villains instead.

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