Mary: *sigh* Here we go.

Lost in the Never Woods is the second published novel by Aiden Thomas, the author of Cemetery Boys, but it was the first one they wrote. The story follows Wendy Darling (yes, that Wendy Darling) as she teams up with Peter Pan (yes, that Peter Pan) to help solve the mystery of why neighborhood kids are going missing. Wendy also hopes to find out what happened to her younger brothers, who disappeared years ago.

Full disclosure: we read this book because of two main reasons. First, we’ve heard so many good things about Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys and wanted to check out their work. Second, we both got an Advanced Listening Copy from Libro.fm (whoop whoop!), and thought it might be a nice fit for YA Book Club. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start with this book. It was a lot.

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW.

Emily: Yes, I was actually planning on reading Cemetery Boys this year, but then this book fell into our laps, and I was like, well, we should probably just read this one. I love retellings, after all. 

Mary: Typically I love a retelling of something, and I especially love Peter Pan. That being said, Lost in the Never Woods felt like fanfiction to me. It wasn’t polished and I don’t think it added anything to the actual story. Before the book was published, Aiden Thomas even dropped a review on Goodreads giving fans a trope list in the same way one might before a fanfiction. They said it was “basically fanfic,” but like...is it good fanfic? I’ve read some good fanfic in my time (and Emily I know you have, too), but this doesn’t seem to add anything that was missing from the original story. In fact, it’s absolutely creepy to me that Wendy forms a romantic relationship with the dude her mom played with as a kid.

Emily: I would agree that this felt a lot like fanfic. First of all, I wasn’t really expecting this to be a romance novel when I picked it up, just based on the description. But honestly, I think this book is much more romance than it is mystery or even fantasy. The main story here is that Wendy can’t get this “imaginary” boy Peter out of her head. She finds herself drawing pictures of him when she doesn’t mean to. And then suddenly, he’s real. And they have a mystery to solve. But the mystery seemed like more of a way to pull these two together, and actually solving the mystery felt very secondary. 

And the reason this felt more like fanfic (to me anyway) than an actual romance story is because, well, first of all, obviously Peter Pan is already a famous character and this is putting that character in a new story. But all retellings do that. What’s different here is that it just feels like the author seems to be in love with Peter the character. And is writing this whole story around fulfilling some sort of fantasy they have about Peter Pan. Which, sure, I can’t say if that’s what was going on in Aiden Thomas’ head when they wrote this, but that’s what it reads like. 

Mary: I agree. I wanted more nuance to Peter’s character, or even like an appreciation of the original character. Peter Pan is mischievous, childish, and selfish, but Peter in this novel felt like the most generous, fantastical boy. It felt off.

One thing I want to talk about is how Wendy experiences alarming mental health symptoms throughout the book—anxiety, trauma—and the book doesn’t seem to address it at all? At the end, Wendy mentions going to therapy, but like...did her parents not think it was important to confront any of this?

Emily: Yeah, that really bothered me. Her grief surrounding her brothers’ disappearances isn’t really dealt with in a nuanced way at all. Or AT ALL, really. Same with her parents. They were clearly dealing with their own grief in their own dysfunctional ways. But again, that’s not addressed in more than just a few passing sentences. In general, I just kept wondering, “Are these people okay?” And I got the sense that the answer is, no, no they aren’t.

Mary: No, they’re really not okay. I know that dealing with feelings is a huge part of YA, and it should be IMO. But none of that was happening here. No one in this novel is okay, and I’m not sure that they ever make it to being okay. Even after the family gets the closure of finding out what really happened to the brothers, it still feels like they’re not going to process their grief. And they need to. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I would’ve liked to see some attempt to work through stuff in a healthier way.

Emily: So let’s talk about the mystery. As I mentioned, I was expecting this to be more mystery, less romance. And the mystery felt shoehorned in, to me. We finally get the answers to where Wendy’s brothers have gone in the last part of the book, but there’s no build-up to that at all. There’s nothing that makes that answer feel satisfying. I was left wondering if Aiden Thomas has ever read a mystery or bothered to look into how mystery stories function. How did you feel about the mystery in this story?

Mary: Gosh, I mean was there even a mystery? Lost in the Never Woods is so slow to get to what readers want to know. I think that going in, most readers are going to recognize that Peter Pan from the stories is Peter in the novel, but it takes Wendy a long time to come to terms with that. If that’s not the mystery, then what is? What happened to her brothers? The reality of what happened to Wendy’s brothers—that they were accidentally killed by the Darling’s neighbor and buried in the woods—is thrown in as such an afterthought that I almost missed it. Even after it's revealed...what? Does he just not get in trouble? For killing two boys? I can’t. This was the single most annoying thing to me in the entire book. I felt like the plot wasn’t propelling me towards anything significant.

Emily: I guess we also need to talk about the “bad guy” in this story… Peter’s shadow. I have no words. Tell me what you thought of this. 

Mary: Again, I cannot handle this. I did like the nod to Wendy sewing Peter’s shadow back on, because that’s something that I always liked, but I can’t buy that Peter’s shadow is the villain of the novel. And he’s...what?...feeding off of kids’ fear? Get out of here. We’ve all seen Monsters Inc. and we know this plotline.

Emily: Monsters Inc. is so much better than this book. I also want to talk about how bad this writing was, which to me was the biggest let down of all. I’ve heard really great things about Cemetery Boys, and if the writing was good here, then I’d be totally down to still check it out. Because, you know, maybe this story just wasn’t for me, but maybe the other one would be. But I’m assuming Aiden Thomas didn’t just magically become a bad writer for one book. I hate being so negative as to call someone a “bad writer” and I don’t throw around that term lightly, but this was just difficult to read. So many characters were furrowing their brows and murmuring. Every other paragraph someone was murmuring at someone else. I can’t even tell you the last time I murmured. Is this a thing people do on the regular? 

Mary: You know, I think it is. A lot of YA books have that kind of tone, where authors think they need to tell you every single expression on a character's face, and I don’t need that as a reader. I also feel bad saying how much I disliked this book, because I genuinely believe Cemetery Boys could be great. I’m guessing—and this is purely my own speculation—that after the success of Cemetery Boys, Thomas’ publisher asked them, hey, got anything else? And Thomas said, “Sure, I’ve got my first novel kicking around.” This reads like someone trying to figure out their writing style, and that’s okay, but I don’t know that it needed to be published. 

When I tell you I rated this book a 1 on Goodreads, what I mean is that I wish I could’ve given it a 0. I’m so utterly disappointed. And honestly, this book is not for me for a variety of reasons. If I was younger, and maybe not familiar with the source material, I could’ve enjoyed it, I guess. But as I am now, I can’t. 

Emily: Yes, maybe if I were a goth kid in 1994 when I read this, and had never read a book before in my life, and didn’t know how books are written or how stories work, I might have enjoyed this book. I also gave it 1 star. Is this the worst book we’ve ever read for YA book club?

Mary: Yeah, I think it is. As with anything, it’s entirely possible we just aren’t the audience for this book. We didn’t like it, but lots of other folks do. But man, did we really not like it. 

Next month we’re picking up another book we both received from Quirk (thanks, Quirk! We love u) called Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal. I’m pumped for this one because honestly, I’ve never thought of framing lycanthropy as a medical condition, and that’s really interesting to me. It’s also worth noting that once again Quirk has delivered a beautiful cover. 

Emily: Yes, we’re so excited about this book! See you all in May!