Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Darling Girl

I received this book as a gift and was excited to read a new take on the Peter Pan story.
"Darling Girl" follows Holly Darling, the granddaughter of the infamous Wendy Darling. Holly's life is going as well as can be expected, until she receives a phone call that her daughter, Eden, who has been in a coma for the last decade, is missing. Desperate to find Eden, and to protect her son, Jack, Holly might just have to face Peter Pan himself.
This was a really fun, new take on the Peter Pan story. In the original "Peter Pan" story, Peter Pan is much more sinister than the Disney story, so I enjoyed seeing a story play more into that side of Peter Pan. I also really appreciated that this is not a retelling, but rather a new story that expands upon what could have happened years after the original story. No matter how the original "Peter Pan" ended, the Darling family would have been greatly impacted by what happened for decades afterwards, and I really enjoyed getting to see a new generation of Darlings have to face Peter Pan and his evil ways.
Holly's life has been filled with a lot of tragedy, and her reasoning for her decisions felt a little skewed in my opinion. The reader learns fairly early on that something about Eden is helping to keep Jack alive. This small fact feels kind of wrong, and it made me question Holly as a mother. Why did she value Jack's life over Eden's? I wish she would have fought harder to figure out what was going on with Eden and try to help her more. Additionally, I do not understand why she had to keep Eden from Jack. Jack was too young when the accident occurred to remember Eden, but I feel like Holly could have talked about Eden with Jack as he got older.
This story was fine, and I had a fine time reading it, but I probably will not think about it much in the future.

Content Warnings

tess1912's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

taylor13's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

micaelamariem's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I was so excited to read this book even though I put it off for so long. (It was my BOTM pick a year ago). I love fairy tale retellings and I love when they’re dark and gritty too, like a homage to the originals which were meant to be dark and gritty. But this book was mostly disappointing. It took me a while to decide how to rate this, because some of it was actually well-written and I did feel like I was in New York and London.

But there were things I really didn’t like and it wasn’t until reading the other reviews that I could put words to it. I will say that a main complaint of others is not of mine—BUT still check trigger warnings. There is SA in the book but I thought it was going to be more graphic based on the complaints and it wasn’t the main point of the book. The book is more about Peter Pan kidnapping children (which again is kind of a homage to the original).
I think it had potential if we saw more of Peter and how he grew dark—or even got to see what Neverland has become! That would have been much more interesting than just chapter after chapter of Holly worrying and sad with very little action to fix the problem.

Also, someone else said they were annoyed how Holly wanted to sleep with everyone she met, and honestly that was kind of annoying. Though I’m all for sexual freedom, I felt like this took away her agency.

The author also tried to push a romance that didn’t work for me—there was very little burn in it, it was just 0-100. In a sense, my main complaint for everything is that. 0-100, details of worrying but no detail of the action and how they solved the problem. I’m not going to be keeping this book.

Content Warnings

katieimre's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

0.5

Content Warnings

emilyjeanne's review against another edition

Go to review page

slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

DONT WASTE YOUR TIME

Main character is a textbook helicopter parent, and can’t figure out why her kid keeps pushing her away. She’s described as having multiple PhDs, but is somehow so, so stupid. She also kept mentioning she’d do ANYTHING for her kids, but never actually did anything, just threw money at other people to do stuff for her.

I could not root for her as a protaganist because I really just could not stand her character, and all the other characters fell completely flat. They had no personalities, and none of them really progressed the plot at all.

Also, this book has a huge amount of content that should come with content/trigger warnings but doesn’t.

CW: sexual assault, drug use, death of a minor, forced medical testing on minors, suicidal ideation, death of a spouse, kidnapping.

Honestly there’s probably more but this book was so bad I can’t even remember them all, since most of them had nothing to do with the plot anyway.

Content Warnings

saramoser's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

TW: SA, Rape, drugs, child death, child abuse, injecting children with drugs

After reading a lot of reviews, I was so worried I would not like this book. But the book is exactly how it’s described-a dark and twisted Peter Pan, while I think the author could’ve done more to give back stories and further some character development, I still was stuck wanting to find out what’s next. I was deep into the book by the first chapter, and was wanting to do nothing but read the book and find out what happens by the end.

I would suggest for someone who wants the dark and twisted (not just dark) side of Peter Pan.

Content Warnings

More...