Publication Date: May 3, 2022
Source: Book of the Month pick
Rating:
Goodreads Synopsis:
In this beautiful, grounded, and darkly magical modern-day reimagining of J. M. Barrie's classic, to save her daughter's life one woman must take on the infamous Peter Pan--who is not the innocent adventurer the fairy tales make him out to be . . .Life is looking up for Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy--yes, that Wendy. She's running a successful skincare company; her son, Jack, is happy and healthy; and the tragedy of her past is well behind her . . . until she gets a call that her daughter, Eden, who has been in a coma for nearly a decade, has gone missing from the estate where she's been long tucked away. And, worst of all, Holly knows who must be responsible: Peter Pan, who is not only very real, but more dangerous than anyone could imagine.Eden's disappearance is a disaster for more reasons than one. She has a rare condition that causes her to age rapidly--ironic, considering her father is the boy who will never grow up--which also makes her blood incredibly valuable. It's a secret that Holly is desperate to protect, especially from Eden's half-brother, Jack, who knows nothing about his sister or the crucial role she plays in his life. Holly has no one to turn to--her mother is the only other person in the world who knows that Peter is more than a story, but she refuses to accept that he is not the hero she's always imagined. Desperate, Holly enlists the help of Christopher Cooke, a notorious ex-soldier, in the hopes of rescuing Eden before it's too late . . . or she may lose both her children.Darling Girl brings all the magic of the classic Peter Pan story to the present, while also exploring the dark underpinnings of fairy tales, grief, aging, sacrifice, motherhood, and just how far we will go to protect those we love.
Review:
Reading this synopsis, I wanted to much more from this book. I was sadly disappointed. I was so excited to pick it up, but then it fell flat for me.
The book follows Holly Darling, the granddaughter of the infamous Wendy Darling. Yes! The one that met and adventured with Peter Pan. In this ominous retelling, Peter isn't the sweet, whimsical lost boy that we know and love. He is a bit sinister. Holly is a mother of a teen named Jack and a girl named Eden that is very ill and bedridden, but all of a sudden Eden goes missing and Holly has to travel back to London to find her. All of this is complicated by the fact that Jack is ill too, and Eden's condition has been saving him all these years, and he doesn't know about it or her at all.
So why did this just not sit right with me you might be asking? Well, I didn't like Holly at all. She was a mom and that was her whole personality, on top of that she was self-absorbed too. Her children are the only people in the world, but she also kept everything from them. There was so much lying and deception throughout the book, that most of the plot conflicts could have been alleviated by her just telling them the truth, or something for that matter. I honestly couldn’t keep up with the lying and it was frustrating to feel like we weren’t getting anywhere for most of the book because of it.
I expected a twisted retelling, but Pan doesn’t make an appearance until the very end and the ending, while I won’t spoil it, was lack-luster and abrupt. On top of all that, there were SO many triggers in this book. BOTM added one about sexual assault, which was a big one, but there is rape as well, drug abuse, murder, thoughts of suicide, death of children, a lot of grief, physical and mental abuse as well. That is a lot for one book that was just meh.
Overall, I found Holly to be overbearing and kind of a bad mom when all was said and done. Her son Jack was a stereotypical annoying and angsty teenager. Jane, Holly’s mother, was also a bad mother, and another stereotype. In her case, the privileged, never there, upper-class mom. There was a PI named Chris that I wanted to be more involved in the story and I wanted more from the retelling portion to include him and really engrain him in the tale, but that didn’t happen either.
Overall, this one was not for me. It was sadly a disappointment.
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