Book info:
Title: Shadow
Author: Colleen Oakes
Series: Wendy Darling #3
Genre: YA Fairy Tale retelling/fantasy
Release Date: July 18th, 2017
Publisher: Sparkpress, SparkPoint Studio
Source: ARC from publisher for review
My rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
Wendy
Darling has found herself once again in the arms of charming Peter Pan,
the god-child who desires power above all things. This time, though,
Wendy
burns not with passion but with a secret: with Hook as her ally, she is
there to defeat the evil that lies inside of Peter, the evil that holds
all Neverland hostage—the Shadow.
To
do this, Wendy must quietly undo Peter from inside his heart while at
the same time convincing Tink to betray the twisted love that binds them
together. This is a task made nearly
impossible by the arrival of Booth, her sweetheart from London and a
new pawn in Peter’s manipulative game—a boy whose heart she must break
in order to save his life.
As
all of Neverland prepares to fight, Wendy races to untangle Peter’s
connection to the Shadow, a secret long buried in the Forsaken Garden.
When the time comes, pirates, mermaids,
Lost Boys, and the Darling family will all rise—but if Wendy can’t call
the Shadow, they will all be destroyed by Peter’s dark soul. War has
come to paradise, and Neverland will never be the same.
My Review:
If you've followed me for a while, you know that I am a big fan of fairy tale retellings. This series is one that I got the chance to read about a year ago, starting with the second book. While I haven't gone back and picked up the first, even though I do have a copy, I was able to get right in with book two, Seas. If you go click that link and check out my review, you'll see that I really enjoyed it. So when I heard from the publisher about the chance to read the final book in the series, I jumped on the offer. What is really fun about reading it right now, is that I actually was on a family vacation to Disneyworld when I started it this past weekend. Even more funny is that the first ride I rode at the Magic Kingdom was the Peter Pan ride.
In this final book in the trilogy, Colleen Oakes has taken the well-loved story of Peter Pan, and turned it around, while completely staying true to the original ideas and characters in such a way that you still feel you are in that original Neverland written about by JM Barrie. If you haven't finished the first two books, you might want to quit reading for my final paragraphs of the review, just know that I highly recommend this whole series.
While we have come to root against both Peter Pan and Tinkerbell in this story, Wendy is able to still see the good in Peter, as well as Tink, and be able to hope that not only will Wendy be able to defeat the Shadow that is destroying Neverland, but that somehow she can also redeem both Peter and Tink, and help them to be the characters that everyone can love once again. I rooted for Wendy's love from back home, Booth, to understand when she had to play up to Peter, to make him believe she loved him instead of Booth, in order to save his life. I love that what I feel is more realistic, for her explanation to convince Booth without a ton of distrust like you so often find in these situations. While there were those who sacrificed in the end to defeat the shadow, it wasn't in a way that everyone just gave up and became good, no, it worked the way that it needed to. Many beloved characters may have lost their lives in this story, but they did it in ways that pulled at my heart, and kept the story as rich as could be. There were no easy out solutions for this, and there were still surprises at each and every turn of the tale.
If you like a good retelling, or are a fan of Peter Pan, this is the book you need to pick up and read next!
Book info:
Title: Seas
Author: Colleen Oakes
Series: Wendy Darling #2
Genre: YA Fairy Tale Retelling
Published: September 20th, 2016
Source: Finished copy received for review from SparkPoint Studio
Just like with Three Dark Crowns I was contacted back in August to be a part of a Fall YA Tour. Now the books came a little later than planned, so I didn't get to this one before the publishing date unfortunately. I also had asked for the first book in the series, but due to the mix up and late mailing, I didn't get it. Fortunately, the author does a great job of catching you up on what happened in the last book. It's not done in a big info dump at the beginning, although you do get the necessary details right away. A lot of what happened is spread throughout the story in appropriate conversations and memories in the right spot. Obviously there will be a few spoilers in my review below, sorry about that. But you can pick this one up and read it without reading the first one if you want.
As you can guess, this is a retelling of the story about Peter Pan. Only in this version, Peter is not the good guy. Captain Hook is still a pirate, and so still not really a nice guy, but in this story he is going to be really all that Wendy has to help her get her brother back from Peter, as well as to keep her safe from Peter's obsession with her. You see Peter Pan is very charming. Not only does he have Tinkerbelle in love with him, but at first, he makes Wendy feel like she is in love as well. But soon she sees him for what kind of a person he really is, when he takes her up flying, and drops her from very high above the ground. He catches her, at the last minute, but uses this as a way to try to make her stay with him. But Wendy now just wants to get her brothers and get back home. Even though according to everyone in Neverland, there is no way back. Wendy and her youngest brother Michael must learn to live on the pirate ship, while Hook tells Wendy his story and his reasons for being after Peter. Wendy will work in the kitchen, and get to know the pirates well enough to call some of them friends, in their own way. As long as she is on the ship, she is pretty well protected from Peter.
Eventually Hook and Wendy will go to find out how to really kill Peter, which will require a dangerous trip alone for Wendy, so that she can ask help from the mermaids. The mermaids who will trade the information for virgin blood. Wendy's blood. Along their travels Wendy will not only have to worry about Peter finding her, but also some of the pirates on the very ship she is on may not be able to be trusted. Along with a big pirate summit where there is mutiny among Hook and the other ships. The mermaids cannot be trusted, and even just to get to them Wendy will travel a path where Peter will almost be able to capture her and stop her.
Wendy's thoughts are just to save her brothers and get back to her home where her family is, as well as the man that she really feels she could be in love with. In the end we will lose some of the characters we grow to love, and things will not come out quite the way as planned. There is a big surprise at the end, making me very anxious for the next book, so that I can see what Wendy will do to solve this next obstacle.
This was my first book by the author, even though I have a copy of the ARC of Queen of Hearts sitting on my TBR shelf. I am definitely very excited to read that one now, and I have also ordered my own copy of the first book in this series so that I can read about the whole relationship between Peter and Wendy, and how this version of the fairy tale all began. If you haven't started this author, or this series, I definitely recommend it.
Book info:
Title: Three Dark Crowns
Author: Kendare Blake
Genre: YA Fantasy
Published: September 20th, 2016
Source: ARC received from SparkPoint Studio (also through books for trade)
I was contacted back in August by a publicist from SparkPoint Studio about being part of a Fall YA Blog Tour, and one of the books they were featuring was this one, Three Dark Crowns. This was a book I'd been excited about since I first heard of it earlier this past summer. So I emailed and asked if there were still any copies of it left so that I could be a part of the tour. And lucky me, they still had copies available! Now, it was a little later before I got the book, but I was still able to get it read, almost on time. The plan was to do a review on Friday, but I wasn't able to get it finished in time. I tried really hard to finish it before bed, getting through almost 100 pages before bed, but then I was tired. So I finished the final 50 pages this morning while I was getting my pedicure. And let me tell you what, those last 50 or so pages were incredible!!! The whole story was good, but the end, well it just really grabbed me and held on, and kept me gasping and reading with my mouth hanging wide open until the bitter, and I mean bitter, end. So many surprises at the end. Betrayals, magical gifts being different than suspected, and the romance, even that had its twists and turns.
The story is told in three separate viewpoints, one for each queen, and they basically alternate through each one. The first queen that we meet is Katharine. She comes from the current ruling family of the poisoners. You see these people are able to eat anything poisonous and live. They also know how to come up with poisons to affect others when needed. But Katharine doesn't quite seem to live up to her gift, and it worries those around her, that one of the other two queens, her two sisters, will end up winning the fight for the crown, thus ending the rule of the Poisoners. When we first meet Katharine she is getting ready to do a sort of "practice" meal, what she will have to do when the competition between the queens first starts. She must eat from all the different dishes of a special meal, one where every type of food is poison, mushrooms, poison creatures, berries, etc. She's never been able to really stomach much of the poison, so her only hope is to be able to eat a little bit, and then get away from everyone before she is unable to hold it down any longer. Only things don't quite work out that way. And with her failure, her own people lose confidence in her, and she is disgraced. Her trainer's nephew, Pietyr, shows up to try to prepare Katharine to capture all of the suitors attention, thinking that may be the best way to go.
The second queen we find out about is Arsinoe. While Katharine was the youngest of the three, Arsinoe is the middle girl. Arsinoe is with the naturalist people. These people can communicate with animals, make plants grow, all of that. Arsinoe's best friend, Jules, is actually one of the strongest naturalists that anyone has seen in a long time. Unfortunately, Arsinoe doesn't seem to be getting her gift. Unlike everyone else in the town, she doesn't have her own familiar, and can't seem to attract one. With the help of Jules's mother Madrigal, she begins to use a type of low magic to try to do what she needs to do. The first attempt is to get a bear, and when it seems to be working, and Arsinoe goes out to find this bear, things turn bad, because the bear isn't under her power, instead it attacks, and Arsinoe's chances at being queen seem to go down, just as Katharine's have. The romance at first in this one is between her friend Jules and their childhood friend Joseph. Joseph has been away at the mainland, punished for trying to help Arsinoe escape the island when she was younger. But now he comes back, and he brings with him the son of his foster family, William, or Billy as he goes by. Billy is going to be a suitor. And he begins by getting to know Arsinoe, and becoming her friend.
The final queen is Mirabella. Mirabella's gift is strong, she is an elemental. She can control water, wind, fire, and the earth itself. She is also backed by the priestesses. And this year, she is rumored to be the strongest of the three queens, and is pretty much set to win according to most. But Mirabella, who is the oldest of the three, doesn't think she will be able to go through with killing her own sisters. She doesn't quite have the heart for it. Something that is shown to the priestesses when she isn't even able to participate in a sacrifice like she is supposed to. When the priestesses begin to worry things won't go the right way because of this soft side of Mirabella, they scheme to come up with a new plan. A White Queen year. Where the other two queens are killed by other people or events before the final ceremony. And the priestesses set out to try to make this happen. At first there isn't much a love interest in this, although because of her beauty and strong gift, Mirabella is still expected to win all of the suitors. Then, during one event where Mirabella has affected the water and wind and caused a boat to almost sink, and the boy in it to drown, she does find a connection. But it is this connection that will be a betrayal in a way to one of her sisters.
Let me say how much I loved the way this story was done. I love how the different gifts were used, or how they were not used by those who could not. I love the characters relationships with the people around them. There were definitely the people around them that you rooted for, and were so happy the queens had in their life. Then there were those people that you hated and rooted for anything bad to happen to keep them away from the queens. And then there were those that gave up unimaginable things to help the queens, and those that were so close, yet still betrayed them. There were moments when you thought one of the queens was going to die, and it was so shocking. And there were times when they could come back from what seemed to be the edge, and that too was amazing.
I loved this book. I am so eager to read the next one, because with the way things were left, there are so many things that could happen! I want the sisters to unite against everyone and rule together, but now it doesn't seem as if that will happen, with all the betrayal, real or imagined. So much in this story. I hope that you get a chance to pick this up and read it soon!
