Review: Not A 'True' Retelling, But Fun To Read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 18, 2013
I have reveiewed the first two books separately before they were combined into this nifty little complete series edition, which I greatly appreciate. I considered continuing to review each novelette separately, but they flow so well in here that it would really be like reviewing chapters of a book, which I have no interest in doing. Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, onto the real review!I'll admit it; my opinion flipped a complete 180 degrees compared to my review of the first novelette in this series. My secret; I didn't think of it as a Peter Pan retelling anymore.Because if you do, you'll be disappointed. The characters are simply nothing like they are in the original novel whatsoever. Their personalities are extremely different. So DON'T compare it to Peter Pan, because it's nothing like that. (Whether or not that is a bad thing depends on why you are reading the book, I suppose.)I did this, and I loved the characters, the plot--everything way more than I did at first. Tink was very likeable and I was really rooting for her. Her love for Peter was adorable! Peter was awesome and dreamy. Jangles was a charater that I felt could have been a bit more developed, but I still liked her. Wendy isn't supposed to be a character you like, so I can't really say I connected with her or anything, but I felt that she really added to the drama of the story.One character that I still hated was Hook. This whole backstory that we were given about him just confused me. (There are major spoilers in here. Just warning you, if you haven't read the book you should definitely not peak.) So, we find out that he came from New York because of Peter's dad's box thing that transports people to other dimensions. HE was actually a scientist himself. Which brings up the question: WHY did he decide to become a pirate?? Was he just like, "Well, here we are in this other dimension on some island. I have a yacht, and some staff that got pulled in here with me... Arrggh, matey! Yeah, that's right, I'm a pirate!!" What exactly was his reasoning behind this?There's a bunch of nice little twists in here to keep the story interesting. The ending was just how I hoped it would be, with an extra dose of cuteness thrown in for good measure. (All I can say is, "Peter, you are so wonderful!")So, in conclusion; if you are a Peter Pan fan and you decide to read this, do not associate it with Peter Pan, because it's very different. However, if that's not why you decide to read this, don't worry about it; I don't usually enjoy books by Elle Strauss, but even I really liked this one.