When sneaking around her house one evening, Wendy Darling sees her father kissing another woman. This event, along with the fact that Wendy’s father has gone bankrupt and lost this job, starts off the breakdown of the Darling family. Her father takes to drinking a lot, her mother is a frivolous thing who doesn’t realize they are in financial problems (or that her husband is having an affair), and Wendy’s younger brothers are too young to comprehend what’s going on.

I really wish the cover of this book hadn’t said that it was “inspired by Peter Pan,” because I spent most of the book trying to discover how exactly Peter Pan inspired this book, and for the life of me I can’t figure it out.

You see, I pick up these books that are based on other literary universes because every once in a while you find something so imaginative and original that only makes what it is based on more endearing. It’s just getting through everything else to get to that one shiny book that’s always hard.

Not that this was a bad book; if I pretended that the children weren’t named Wendy, John and Michael (because as far as I can see it, those names are the only similarities to Peter Pan – the characterizations were so… off) then I enjoyed what I was reading.