The Wendy by Erin Michelle Sky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I was really excited about this story and I thought it had a good beginning, but somewhere along the way it lost its path and me along with it. without further ado I will get to the main part of my review before I forget what I was going to say.
The characters were interesting, to say the least, not interesting in a way that would hold the reader’s attention, but interesting as to their motivations for acting the way they do.
Let me start from the top. Every character from the original Peter Pan story is in this story and it is not difficult to spot who they are. The role they had in the original story is the role they have in this story, period.
But there wasn’t any depth to them. And it felt slightly weird how John and Michael (Wendy’s brothers in the original) talked to Wendy, as if they were siblings, yet they weren’t. There was a strange undercurrent of coddling emotions that were reciprocated by all three that made their relationship odd.
Wendy as the protagonist had a lot of potential, but it wasn’t utilized even in the slightest. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to be a strong independent woman or just the pouty girl, who doesn’t get her way.
Her character was incomplete and unbalanced. One moment I would like her and could emphasize with her, the next I thought she was a completely different person in the story.
The plot. As it was mentioned in other reviews I have read on this story, there is certainly an undertone of feminist commentary, but I think it kind of went sideways. Again, it wasn’t used to its fullest potential, especially because the story unfolded so very slowly and was written with a very traditional, fairytale narrative style.
This type of narrative didn’t fit at all. It was light, yet talked about topics that weren’t light, as if the authors wanted to mention them, but didn’t want to rock the boat by actually having an opinion on the matter.
It would have also made a lot more sense to have the story told from Wendy’s perspective instead of the third-person used. I couldn’t connect with her. I couldn’t empathise with her, because I felt her being kept at arm’s length.
This was another contradictory part of this story; it was told from the third-person perspective, but in almost every chapter the reader gets to hear Wendy’s private thoughts.
Overall, I would have loved to call this story a new favourite, but alas there were too many contradictions, too many confusions and too many little things that just didn’t add up for me.
Sadly, I have to give this one a pass.
