Lost Boy by Christina Henry

So I had a very good reason to hate this book. This year I attempted NaNoWriMo and my original idea was to write a horror version of Peter Pan. I got about 2,000 words in, decided to check my emails and there was an email from Goodreads about voting for the best books of the year. I see this cover and my heart drops.

There goes my idea.

Thankfully for me, this book is actually not a horror at all, despite Goodreads telling me it is. Also thankfully, it turns out to be one of my favourite books of the year against all odds. Lost Boy is indeed the story of Captain Hook, although that is more of an inevitable conclusion than the actual plot. What it actually is is the story of the very first Lost Boy and what the reality of that is. Jamie is our protagonist and (excluding the prologue which frankly, is pretty badly written) from the first chapter, I was just sucked in by his character. It's hard for me to describe why the writing style works so well because it's actually extraordinarily simple. That's part of the brilliance though-it is unclear how old Jamie is meant to be, but this is undoubtedly the voice of a child. However, it's not irritating or dumbed down in order to portray that.

The plot itself is again simple, but this is a book that is all about atmosphere. It is a lot less dark than I was led to believe but that doesn't mean there isn't a subtle sense of doom embedded in every page. I really enjoyed how the author handled Peter Pan and slowly revealed piece by piece just how messed up their world was. It reminded me a lot of Only Ever Yours in that sense, and it was similarly well done. Though you know Jamie is destined to become Hook, the plot is not obvious in how it will progress and I must admit I didn't see several things coming, though in hindsight they make perfect sense. My one minor niggle is that I didn't like the equation of romantic attraction and adulthood. I liked Sal as a character but it felt a little forced and ultimately, didn't add too much to the story in my eyes. I understand completely what the author was going for and I liked the twist of a lost girl, but the romance felt out of place and I don't think the book would have suffered without it.

It is so refreshing for me to pick up a book like this which I might have otherwise ignored, and find such enjoyment from it. I had never heard of this author but she has done a version of Alice in Wonderland which I will probably have to read now. As I said, this has quickly become one of my favourite books of the year and I would love for more people to read it.

Overall Rating:

.5