⭐⭐ 2 Stars
I was missing Once Upon A Time's Hook, so I was very excited about this Peter Pan retelling. But sadly I didn't like it.
The references to Peter Pan were great, the places names, of course the characters names and small little things like clocks, boats, and crocodiles. But that's really it. That's all I liked.
James is described as this very dark and authoritative person, incredibly smart by surpassing his master and running a criminal organization, and yet he f••••• up everything and blames the wrong person, your deduction skills suck James. Wendy is incredibly naive and quite dumb. She gives herself a pep talk because she's a "badass” then proceeds to get kidnaped and forgive James way too easily after being chained to his basement for 3 days. I was expecting more anger, drama and conflict from her, especially since this criminal world was new to her and not something she grew up in. And I'm not even going to write about their relationship. Yes, this is a dark romance, but it was a mix between insta-love, toxicity and really weird sex descriptions that were supposed to be "dark".
The ending was predictable
Spoiler
example: Jon being James's brother was kind of obvious from how Peter treated him, but never explained since Jame´s parents are described as happy and very caring of him, when did the cheating occur then? And Smith being a villain was also foreshadowed since the clock incident but how did he end up being his cousin? Why did the uncle never introduce them? It felt a very forced way to end the book.
The two stars are because I really like the cover and the references.