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A review by jenpaul13
Darling Girl by Liz Michalski
4.0
The adventures of the Darling children may be the stuff of stories, but the reality of what began with Wendy is haunting and dangerous in Liz Michaelski’s Darling Girl.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Holly Darling, the granddaughter of Wendy Darling of J. M. Barrie’s famous story, is running a successful skin care company that plays off of her last name, and raising her son Jack in New York when she gets a startling phone call that brings the numerous tragedies of her past back in major ways; her daughter, Eden, has disappeared from their Cornwall home where she’s been in a coma for nearly ten years. The suspects for her disappearance are few and Holly fears that her suspicions about Peter Pan forcing his way back in her life might just be real. Returning to her family home in London with Jack in tow, Holly begins her search for Eden and Peter. With all the secrets that Holly’s kept about Eden, including that the boy who will never grow up is her father, her rapid aging, and her unique blood that’s helped keep Jack healthy, Holly turns from her mother Jane’s optimism about Peter and desperately enlists the aid of an ex-soldier turned private detective with a prosthetic hand, which is occasionally replaced by a hook, to help rescue Eden. Determined to not lose her children, Holly doggedly searches for Peter and Eden and along the way learns unsettling things about Neverland that makes her rethink Barrie’s tale and her family’s history.
Using elements from the classic Peter Pan tale and framing a narrative around life events of Wendy’s granddaughter Holly, notably the disappearance of her comatose daughter Eden as a catalyst setting events in motion, the story uses the fantastic and magical, weaving it through the struggles and darkness of ordinary life to explore various topics, including grief, innocence, motherhood, and sacrifice. In establishing the world that the Darlings live in, it was helpful to see how Peter Pan lore was so widely known and assumed as commonplace in the world, aiding in the acceptance of the other magically driven aspects to characters, which occasionally felt a bit over the top in their description of otherworldliness, and their interactions with the world around them, including how Eden’s impacted by her Pan parentage while beyond Neverland’s borders; it was intriguing to see the manner that Neverland bled in to reality, manifesting in a radiating manner from the nucleus of the Darling women in the people they encounter. Though not directly present for most of the narrative, Peter’s character was pervasive as a shadowy influence and took the general mischievousness he’s typically depicted with and molded it to a more malevolent force, fitting with the darker, grittier turn of the world.
Overall, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Holly Darling, the granddaughter of Wendy Darling of J. M. Barrie’s famous story, is running a successful skin care company that plays off of her last name, and raising her son Jack in New York when she gets a startling phone call that brings the numerous tragedies of her past back in major ways; her daughter, Eden, has disappeared from their Cornwall home where she’s been in a coma for nearly ten years. The suspects for her disappearance are few and Holly fears that her suspicions about Peter Pan forcing his way back in her life might just be real. Returning to her family home in London with Jack in tow, Holly begins her search for Eden and Peter. With all the secrets that Holly’s kept about Eden, including that the boy who will never grow up is her father, her rapid aging, and her unique blood that’s helped keep Jack healthy, Holly turns from her mother Jane’s optimism about Peter and desperately enlists the aid of an ex-soldier turned private detective with a prosthetic hand, which is occasionally replaced by a hook, to help rescue Eden. Determined to not lose her children, Holly doggedly searches for Peter and Eden and along the way learns unsettling things about Neverland that makes her rethink Barrie’s tale and her family’s history.
Using elements from the classic Peter Pan tale and framing a narrative around life events of Wendy’s granddaughter Holly, notably the disappearance of her comatose daughter Eden as a catalyst setting events in motion, the story uses the fantastic and magical, weaving it through the struggles and darkness of ordinary life to explore various topics, including grief, innocence, motherhood, and sacrifice. In establishing the world that the Darlings live in, it was helpful to see how Peter Pan lore was so widely known and assumed as commonplace in the world, aiding in the acceptance of the other magically driven aspects to characters, which occasionally felt a bit over the top in their description of otherworldliness, and their interactions with the world around them, including how Eden’s impacted by her Pan parentage while beyond Neverland’s borders; it was intriguing to see the manner that Neverland bled in to reality, manifesting in a radiating manner from the nucleus of the Darling women in the people they encounter. Though not directly present for most of the narrative, Peter’s character was pervasive as a shadowy influence and took the general mischievousness he’s typically depicted with and molded it to a more malevolent force, fitting with the darker, grittier turn of the world.
Overall, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.