Queer retelling of a well-known fairy tale? Sign me up! I appreciate that this book provides a different aspect of Tink - one where rather than be bitter and jealous about Wendy "stealing her man" she can have feelings for both of them. Definitely worth checking out.

Rating: 4.5* of five

Pride Month #1

The Publisher Says: What happens when Tinker Bell is in love with both Peter Pan and Wendy? In this sparkling re-imagining of Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy’s granddaughter Hope Darling finds the reclusive Tinker Bell squatting at the Darling mansion in order to care for the graves of her two lost friends after a love triangle gone awry. As Hope wins the fairy’s trust, Tink tells her the truth about Wendy and Peter—and her own role in their ultimate fate. Told in three alternating perspectives—past, present, and excerpts from a book called Neverland: A History written by Tink’s own fairy godmother—this queer adaptation is for anyone who has ever wondered if there might have been more to the story of Tinker Bell and the rest of the Peter Pan legend.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Never for a moment have I believed that the story of Peter Pan and Wendy and the Lost Boys was sweet and Innocent and all on the up-and-up. There is a seedy adult-mediated sexuality in the whole concept of the story. The Lost Boys and Peter trapped in that eternal tween-age: where parents can comfortably if mendaciously Not Know that their kids are steadily, stealthily beginning the sad journey into adolescent sexual awakening. They're busily putting together hints and clues, and feeling weird new things without possessing words to explain them yet. Wendy, here as always the odd creature out, has a body the Boy and his boys don't know inside out already. She has a mind they can't fathom and she can't explain, because who can explain how they are built different from you? And because no one really talks to kids about what they want to know regarding sex and sexuality, parents keep giving kids the original deeply subversive story about the tragedy that befalls the innocent when Innocence is finally and forever lost. Never mind that the kids don't want this Innocence we're determined to protect in them. Having no idea of what Innocence means, the Innocent can't wait to get rid of it.

"It's harmless," goes the reassuring hiss of the lying snake within the well-meaning adult. "After all, it's got a tiny fairy standing between them, so Nothing Can Happen."

That's what this book is about: what happens when the tiny fairy, sick of being Between too many things and having no ground of her own, takes her rightful place in the action. As seasoned readers we know that's the starting gun for tragedy to unfold. This book is about the price that loving one, being in love with the other, exacts on the lover. Also what terrors there lurk within the armor-plated ignorance of being the belovèd. This story rips the dishonesty off the older story of wanting to keep your cake but eat it too...that evergreen source of unhappy resolutions to love triangles. Teach them young that there is no frictionless way to be in love: If you care enough to make it count, like Tink does, you will suffer most when your belovèd suffers. Teach them before they create disaster by refusing to choose, by declining to believe they can, they truly can! have happiness if they bravely reach out for it. It's better done like this than the Innocence-celebrating original.

These readers come away clear about what prolonging Innocence costs. What they probably don't—maybe eevn shouldn't yet— see is the pale and semi-conscious illness-ridden compromised and dishonest simulacrum that will, like here in this story, become the best you can have if you waver betwixt and between, refusing to make a choice.

As stories for youths go, this one is honest, well-told, and contains what looks like a happy ending that is, in fact, a dire warning. I'd time-travel to give this morally complex, intellectually serious retelling of a deeply problematic story told by a very sketchy source I wouldn't let near anyone under twenty-five to every teen I knew when I was one myself. ( )

This was an amazing queer take on the story of Peter Pan! This retelling starts out after everything has gone wrong and follows the past, present, and excerpts from a book within the book as Tink tells her story to Hope, Peter and Wendy’s granddaughter, years after they’ve both died.

I was a huge fan of Tinkerbell and Peter Pan as a child, and so I was very excited for this retelling, especially with a queer spin. The story and characters were well developed, and my only complaint is that it could feel slightly "preachy" at times, especially for a novel marketed as YA. However, I very much enjoyed it! ( )

Since the present day piece of this melodramatic novel is set in the time of an adult grandchild, I expected the reason for Peter and presumably Wendy's deaths to be old age. This isn't a book about an immortal not being able to deal with being in love with two mortals who have lived out their lives.

No. Silly me, this is an isakai after all. Who is the unsung hero of the genre? Truck-kun of course!

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2022/comments_01/tink_and_wendy.html ( )