Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan
A Book of The Month Club pick
In this beautiful dive into the world of J. M. Barrie’s classic, one woman must take on the infamous Peter Pan—who is not the innocent adventurer the fairy tales make him out to be—to save her daughter’s life. . . .
Life is looking up for Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy—yes, that Wendy. That is, 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 very dangerous.
Holly is desperate to find Eden and protect her son, Jack, from a terrible web of family secrets before she loses both her children. And yet she has no one to turn to—her mother, Jane, 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.
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.
In this beautiful dive into the world of J. M. Barrie’s classic, one woman must take on the infamous Peter Pan—who is not the innocent adventurer the fairy tales make him out to be—to save her daughter’s life. . . .
Life is looking up for Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy—yes, that Wendy. That is, 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 very dangerous.
Holly is desperate to find Eden and protect her son, Jack, from a terrible web of family secrets before she loses both her children. And yet she has no one to turn to—her mother, Jane, 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.
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.
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Community Reviews
kinda mid :/
not much character development or world building at all. easy read but definitely left a lot to be desired
not much character development or world building at all. easy read but definitely left a lot to be desired
I enjoyed this darker re-telling of Peter Pan. Started off a little slow but I really got into the ending.
Peter Pan retelling where Peter is the bad guy. It would be helpful to know the story’s background before diving in. Much of the reading depends on you knowing the original story.
I know this because despite Peter Pan being over one hundred years old, I do not fully know the original story, just bits and pieces, and at times I was a bit confused.
The pace of this book was agonizingly slow. It took 150 pages to get out the background story and for anything interesting to happen. Then, just when you think something happened, that was intensely slow. Not only that, but we kept seeing Holly say the same shit over and over. It got old fast reading the same thing in fifty different ways.
Based on the story’s timeline and how miserable it is, I thought there was no way this story ends in a HEA, but I knew the author would hurriedly wrap it up in a nice bow anyway. Then I got to the end and realized I was right. The ending was so forced. Nothing got explained either. We were just supposed to accept what happened with no further explanation. We are supposed to infer Jack is completely healed based on Holy’s simple observation, with no explanation except a theory? Peter also went up in dust based on a theory; no clarification? Eden’s blood makes Jane age decades backward while it only heals Jack?
Not to mention how nothing ever really happens, either. The story is just a constant flow of people having conversations, and there’s never any action. When there is, we are conveniently kept out of it, and we only hear the aftermath of the story after. The crash, the fall, the party, the conceiving, even the bell tower scene. We never get to be there; we only get told the stories and memories after. I truly hope I never pick up another book like this again.
It was truly suffering being stuck in Holly’s head. She was so pessimistic, closed off, and one-track-minded. Not only was she suffocating Jack, but she was suffocating me as well. I get her concerns but let the boy live his damn life. A life shackled is no life at all. I did not feel an ounce of pity when Holly’s world started to crumble around her after Eden woke up because Holly created all of her problems with the lies she spun.
I truly despise when people’s problems are of their creation because all they do is lie to people. Sometimes, I can understand if their survival depends on it, but that was not the case here in Holly’s case. She is just stuck in her head and never takes herself out to see it from someone else’s point of view. She kept crucial information from her loved ones. Truths they had every right to know, no matter the damage the truth inflicted upon the individuals. They had the right to know, and Holly took away that right from them, especially Jack.
Besides Jack, these characters are completely one-dimensional, one-tracked, and unlovable. They either suck, or we don’t see enough of them to care. It got old fast reading the same thing in fifty different ways.
I know I harped on about how much I disliked this story (because it sucked), but it occasionally throw out a good one-liner.
Darling Girl was a bit uneven for me. There were very cool concepts, like Jane's obsession with Peter Pan and Peter himself, but many of the references seemed shoehorned in. I didn't care for most of the characters at all, but absolutely loved Christopher. It's a worthwhile read for Pan fans, but I was ultimately left unsatisfied.
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