Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas #BookReview

When children go missing, people want answers. When children go missing in the small coastal town of Astoria, people look to Wendy for answers.

It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road, and gets pulled into the mystery haunting the town.

Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, claims that if they don’t do something, the missing children will meet the same fate as her brothers. In order to find them and rescue the missing kids, Wendy must confront what’s waiting for her in the woods.

Title: Lost in the Never Woods| Author: Aiden Thomas| Publisher: Swoon Reads| Pub. Date: 23 Mar 2021| Pages:: 384| ISBN: 9781250313973| Genre: Fantasy| Language: English| Starred Review: No | Source: libro.fm

Lost in the Never Woods Review

A Peter Pan story retelling with a twist. Lost in the Never Woods begins when Wendy Darling is eighteen, having forgotten all about who Peter Pan is, until she finds herself zoning in and out, drawing pictures from her mother’s stories. Pictures that can’t possibly be real. Five-ish years before, her brothers Michael and John disappeared, shattering her family into ghosts of their former selves, and despite being there when it happened, Wendy has no memory of what happened to her brothers. Now, children are starting to go missing again, bringing back the grief to the forefront of her mind.

It is not as simple as to describe Lost in the Never Woods as purely Peter Pan fan fiction, because it is dark, encompassing themes of loss, and how this can tear a family apart. It is not a fairy tale.

If anyone has been keeping up to date with my scarce reviews, or lack of posting lately, then you know that my reading has been flushed down the drain. However, I have finally rekindled my love and motivation again, and therefore was SO excited to go and peruse through librofm’s offerings for March! Lost in the Never Woods stood out for me clearly with it’s gorgeous cover, and dark fantasy genre.

Unfortunately, I didn’t connect to this book as much as I wanted to. The characters were okay. I get that we kind of want a bit of a love-story between Peter and Wendy but I found it a little uncomfortable rather than shipping them from the get go. There wasn’t an overly large amount of character development within and it took quite a while for the story to get properly going. I found myself having to speed the audiobook up in order to up the ante and the pace. That being said, I thought the ideas were really great, which I can’t really go into without spoilers, and the way grief/trauma etc. was handled in this novel was sensitively done.

Content warnings include: grief, kidnapping, trauma, loss, ptsd, alcoholism.

I’m settling on 3 stars for this novel with a sprinkling of fairy dust.

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