Review: Lost Boy

Lost Boy by Christina Henry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A young man named Jamie tells the tale of the worst villain he's ever known... an impish boy named Peter.

I've long been a fan of dark retellings of classic tales, like Alice and The Child Thief. When I saw the Bibliosanctum was having a giveaway for this one, I jumped at the chance.

Lost Boy is a dark retelling of Peter Pan from the point of view of the boy who would become Captain Hook. And it's fantastic. What would an island populated by eleven year old boys really be like? It's way more like Lord of the Flies than Neverland. Lost Boys die all the time and Peter goes to the Other Place to retrieve more, just like he did with Jamie, the boy who has been his right hand for 150 seasons, at least.

Peter as an uncaring sociopath makes a lot of sense and is very well thought out. Peter has a short attention span and is extremely selfish and self-centered. The Lost Boys and the pirates are just playthings to him, to be tossed away as soon as they become uninteresting. Actually, he acts more like a cat than a little boy, now that I think about it.

After being on the island with Peter for nearly a century, Jamie starts seeing the chinks in Peter's armor and knows a bloody confrontation is coming. Peter isn't happy unless he's the center of attention so when Jaime spends more time with some of the newer Lost Boys, things go south in a hurry.

The book has a lot of brutal, heart-breaking plot twists. I set the book down to tell my wife about them a few times but, for the most part, I wolfed this book down in three sittings. It's a really gripping read and I couldn't wait to see what psychotic gesture of "friendship" Peter would make next.

The dark spin on the Peter Pan mythos was fantastic. This book postulates answers to age-old questions like "Why don't the boys age?" and "What's with the vendetta between Peter and the pirates?"

When Christina focused her dark lens on Peter Pan, she crafted a winner. If you like dark takes on classic tales, this is the book for you. Five out of five stars.



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