This book was a solid 3.5!
This was space retelling of Peter Pan. I loved her reimagining of the characters, TINC and SMEE especially. The writing was good and I loved the tie in of the original Peter Pan quotes.

The dual POV gave me insight for both Peter and Wendy. I also really liked that she made Wendy more kick butt. The ending left me ready for the sequel and excited to see where the story will go

I had a bit of a rough time with the pacing and I struggled with a couple of other things but overall I really enjoyed this retelling

This book was provided by netgalley in exchange for an honest review! (Thank you)

I have mixed feelings about Second Star, a Peter Pan retelling by J.M. Sullivan. On one hand, I enjoyed the book. The setting, located on a star ship, was unique. I loved how she wove classic Peter Pan story elements into a futuristic book: TINC is a nanobot that Peter designed, SMEE was an electronic servant, and Hooke... well... he's still a captain, just of a starship. It's been a very long time since I watched the classic Disney cartoon, but I know that she incorporated other elements of the story in this retelling as well (and I've never read the original book).

Overall, the story was very good, but I would give it slightly less than 4 stars if I could give fractional stars. It's hard to articulate exactly what, but the book feels like it could use slightly more polish to it. The prose didn't grab me as much as my solid 4-star and 5-star rated books do. The story didn't captivate me enough to make me obsess over it during my day when I was unable to read the book. Those are more subjective elements to a story, but for me, it didn't score as highly on those elements as some other stories do.

The one other element that I thought could have been done a little better was the romance aspect. There was a little too much insta-love between Peter and Wendy. I can understand instant attraction, but they seemed to be a little too emotionally invested in each other a little too quickly. Not to give out spoilers, but there may be potential for a love triangle in the next book, and I'm not sure about that either.

That being said, I do want to find out what happens next, and I have every intention of reading the next book in the series. I would recommend this book to people who are big fans of Peter Pan.

Warning: this review contains spoilers.

I feel so let down. What is there not to love about this premise? A sci-fi retelling of Peter Pan? Sign me up! Sounds amazing!

Once you read it, though... it's not that great. While the writing as a whole wasn’t bad, the text is juvenile - more for a middle-grade audience than for young adults. The novel sticks very close to the source material, making it incredibly predictable. The pacing was too slow at first, and then resolved everything in the last 20% of the book. All of that is annoying, but not unbearable.

The things that were unbearable, though... they can be summed up as two issues, but they are huge, and they completely break the story:

1) The insta-love: Peter and Wendy know each other for only a few days, yet by the time the crew goes back to Earth, they declare thesmselves in love. It’s obvious that they are not even through what the text itself shows: they find the other attractive, Wendy loves Peter’s red hair and his eyes. She gapes at his arms, and he won’t shut up about her “galaxy eyes” (that’s not a color, by the way). Every aspect of their attraction is superficial.

Now, I would buy it if they were younger, if they were 15 year olds, but Wendy is almost 20! I’m not even sure how old Peter’s supposed to be, but he’s well past the age of declaring himself in love with the first girl who visits his planet. Absolutely none of that made me believe that Wendy’s mature enough to lead a military mission of that caliber, nor that Peter is a hardened street kid, so frankly it would’ve been far better if the romance was saved for the latter books. The addition of Boyce as another love interest to set up a love triangle that will probably haunt the sequels just makes matters worse.

2) The stjarnins: turning native americans into “wild” humanoid aliens was a bad idea when James Cameron did it in "Avatar", and it’s a bad idea when you’re retelling Peter Pan. The native people, while stripped of their humanity, still carry their stereotypes, unfortunately: they are savages, their faith is primal, they are not as intelligent as the white folk, and they are (I kid you not!) like “early (read: primal, uncivilized, brutal) humanity”. Hooke himself says so: “The Stjarnin are a savage people, much like early humanity. Even their faith is primal. They worship of a deity passed down from stories and drawings.” (from Chapter 24, “The Crew is Carried Off”). This isn't even presented as the sayings of the villain, no, this is what everyone seems to believe, because nobody ever says otherwise.

Oh, and they make human sacrifices. Yeah. Well, they sacrificed each other at first, but when they noticed they could kill others, they started to hunt British humans instead. Mmhmm.

Absolutely none of this needed to be part of the story. Anything could’ve been done to evade this racist narrative. These aliens could’ve been humans that had arrived to Neverland and gotten stranded before Hooke’s crew. There could have been aliens living with humans, and they could have been “civilized” (there was no reason, other than the racist notion that natives = savages, to make them like this).

That part of the story could’ve been left out entirely, and Tiger Lily could have been a girl on either crew. She could’ve been a “lost girl”. She could’ve stayed with Hooke. She could’ve gone with Wendy and gotten kidnapped by the pirates later. There were a thousand different ways to avoid this anti-native mess, and yet the story still went on this way.

That was my biggest disappointment, and that’s the primary reason why I’m giving Second Star such a low rating and why I won’t be picking up any further books in this series.

While I am not the biggest fan of the classic Peter Pan, the idea of a retelling of Peter Pan set in space was just too appealing to pass on. Unfortunately the book couldn’t quite deliver in the areas that I wanted it to.

This books seems fine at first glance , the writing is solid for instance, but once you start looking a little closer a lot of things fall apart for me. The world building for instance. We get the academy, some time on the space ships and the planet Neverland. But I have very little idea of our society so far as this is set in the future. The only glimpses we get is from Wendy’s parents who made me feel like this was more set in history than in the future. Her mother had a gathering at home when she called for instance and it was all about being prim and proper. I also don’t understand a world where cadets straight out of the academy get a captain role and have a first mission that is a rescue mission, and with a skeleton crew at that. I know this is YA but come one. Can we be realistic?

There were some things I liked. Smee being an artificial intelligence. Tinkerbell being a nanobot. Wendy being the one in charge. Those elements were super interesting and if only the author had expended on those things further instead of grasping onto the basics of Peter Pan. The Disney Peter Pan if I might add. The plot consisted of Peter being stranded with Hook in Neverland, Wendy and her crew being stranded on Neverland. Someone of her crew being captures by the natives. Wendy being kidnapped by Hook. Peter coming to her rescue. Does that sound familiar? Because that is basically the sequence of events in the Disney Peter Pan if my memory serves me right. And it did not get dressed up right.

One thing that made me question a lot was the decision to make the natives green of skin color but keep al lot of the references to the Indians that the original and Disney Peter Pan had. It was a poor choice I think. She could have moved them way further away from that or could have at least moved away from the basic stereotype by deepening out the natives culture which barely happened. Also the lost boys were just fodder handing around Peter. The twins were only called the twins. Like how can you be with someone for a 100 years and not know their name?

And quite honestly there is more, but these things are what stand out to me the most. As said, at first glance this book seems quite solid so if you are looking for just a quick read you should totally go for this. But if you are looking for a bit more in your Peter Pan retelling, I don’t think this is going to be the book for you.

Space pirates and mermaids and deities Oh My! Welcome to a thoroughly entertaining space romp. Fair warning: I am a HUGE sucker for (good) Space Operas so this might be a bit biased.

This Peter Pan reimagining could have gone horribly wrong, especially due to how fundamentally different it is from the original, BUT thankfully it did not disappoint. This was one retelling that was solid on all fronts. The writing was well executed. So much so that I will definitely be looking for more of J.M. Sullivan's worlds to visit in the future. The characters, though not particularly deep, made up for their substance deficiency in spades with their entertainment value. To complete the trifecta of awesomeness that I believe is imperative to have when creating a truly successful read was its plot. It was fun to see how each character was revamped and even more fun guessing how my favorite parts from the original book would translate in a totally different environment. Every time I came across common threads that tied together the original and retold stories I was elated. There were common places and names and dialogue to boot. We even get to witness some crowing.

It wasn't just Peter's POV though. Multi POVs can easily make or break a books' flow but here it worked. It worked so well that I happened to fall in love with characters that I could not connect with in the original story. Three such characters were Wendy, Michael and John. This new and improved Wendy was a kick ass Captain that was extremely intelligent, more than physically capable and an all around female force to be reckoned with. She, John and Michael, who are not related in this re-envisioning, were a beautifully cohesive trio. Both John and Michael were reshaped into VERY clever/barely recognizable young men which rendered them instantly likeable. The tertiary characters were also alluring, even without full dimensionality. I loved Tinc as futuristic tech instead of an annoying fairy and even Smee got a technological upgrade.... SO fun!

What fell flat for me was the romantic element. It felt extraneous and disjointed. I hope this will be rectified in future installments because it really did come off as forced and an afterthought.

Overall: This book was a clever, unique, transportive space Gaunt that I enjoyed immensely. I am definitely looking forward to getting my hands on the next book in the series ASAP. I reccomend this to lovers of Futuristic Space Opera Retellings with Fantastical elements and pirates... SPACE PIRATES!! Sounds like a niche market but if you're a fan of any of those genres, you won't be disappointed.

~ Enjoy

*** I was given a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review ***

This book is a promising start but could use some improvements.

I'm a sucker for fairytale retellings, even if I haven't yet gotten through Cinder and the others. So when I saw this on Netgalley I knew that I had to give it a chance to see how the author had approached such a familiar and beloved tale.

There are some aspects of this book that I loved. The tech was one of them, though I'll fully admit from the start that I don't know enough about the science to question any of it. That I'll leave to other reviewers more skilled than I! Taking a traditional tale and setting it among technology and seeing an author's creativity go to work is one of the things that I love about reading, particularly retellings set in the future. It's amazing how natural it felt to see the characters in a futuristic setting, more so than you might expect.

Secondly, I really loved the take on Wendy in this. She's not simply the gentle sister that the original story introduced us to (though yes, I do know that she was in charge in more ways than one, and brave in her own right)! This book takes that to a new level, though, making her a cadet and then a Captain in her own right, which I adored. I loved being able to see a different side of this traditional character, and the different take on just how she and Peter meet.

So what didn't I like? To be honest, in some ways the book was just *too* similar to the original. There are quite a number of changes, most evidenced in the plot. I just wish that the author had felt brave enough to push that even further. A retelling doesn't have to be so closely based on the original, in fact sometimes that can be a distraction and I found that to be the case in this. I wish that the similarities had been more subtle, serving as less of a 'oh hey, do you remember that this is a Peter Pan retelling? No really, this is a Peter Pan retelling'. Towards the end of the book I found that it got better, but the existence of some of the original - and famous - lines kind of threw me back out.

While Wendy's perspective was rather well done, I found Peter's to be lacking a bit, though this was more towards the beginning of the book. The beginning also suffered from a writing style that seemed a bit stop and start - it seemed as though the author improved throughout the course of the book, which is fantastic, but I would have liked to see the beginning edited a little bit.

The romance also seemed a bit shoehorned in, in some respects. I have no objection to romance, but if the series continues I hope more depth is put into it as so far it seems mostly based on simple attraction.

All in all, I would say that this is an acceptable start to what seems to be a series, and I'd at least be willing to give any future books a shot to see how they go.

This story reminded me a lot of the season of Once Upon a Time where the setting had a lot to do with neverland and pan. There were a lot of similarities and differences. But it was still good. It was just one of those de ja vu moments.
I am a sucker for retellings so I was interested to see where this one was going to go.

I haven't picked up anything Peter Pan inspired in a while so when I came across this one I had to check it out. The story is immersive and has a good balance of new story material with the familiarity of Neverland. All the cool elements combined - it's a pretty interesting read!

I wanted to love this story so much. As a diehard Peter Pan fan, and a lover of Neverland/pirates, etc... I just couldn't get into the setting of this story. The futuristic vibe was well done, it just missed the mark for me. I actually kept wishing it would have been written as a historical fiction instead of sci-fi. I didn't finish this book as I felt myself totally disconnected from the characters. Disappointed that I didn't love it more. 3 out of 5 stars for the great writing, but lackluster characters.

It was a lovely tale and one I would pass on to a friend and recommend to students. A quick and fun read. Thank you for the chance to enjoy it!

confession: i love retellings and reimaginings, and i say this knowing how hard it is to do one right. j.m. sullivan doesn't QUITE hit the mark on second star, but it's a worthwhile read either way! i admit to being biased in the beginning, as a space opera version of peter pan sounds completely made for me, and i went into this fully expecting to enjoy it. thankfully, it was a fun ride, even with that heavy burden of expectation! there are some delightful touches here, such as tinkerbell being depicted as a nanobot with too much personality, and wendy as the captain of her own ship is too good to ignore.

the plotline essentially follows the original peter pan stories beat for beat though, which made it easy to predict. i honestly would've like to see more creativity. furthermore, there were several things that felt shallow. for example, we are often TOLD that this peter is capricious and somewhat wicked like our original pan, but we rarely (if ever) see him acting that way. a retelling should be able to stand in its own right in my opinion, and second star could've used some more fleshing out.

i enjoyed our multiple povs, although our heroes suffer from the obligatory YA insta-love and love triangle problem, and there were a few instances were we switched from peter to wendy (and vice versa) within a few pages. it gave me whiplash at times, and once again, i think sullivan could stand to let the characters breathe more, and give us more time in their heads. this book is effectively all action, which makes it a quick read, but it left me wishing for more - not the WORST problem to have, in all fairness.

still, despite those minor issues, i breezed through book in an evening. thank you for netgalley, the author, and the publisher for loaning me a copy in exchange for a review, and for anyone who loves retellings as much as i do, this one is well worth a shot!

Second Star is an okay read. I think I'm not really a fan of Peter Pan. I just couldn't get interested enough to really enjoy this one.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was caught between 2 stars and 3, but finally decided on two. The writing was average, it didn't really hook me in. It reminded me of my writing, which is bad because my writing is terrible and should never be published for the masses and priced. There were also frequent grammatical errors, which kinda leads me to ask if this book was edited or not before publishing.

The romance, I felt, was also cringey. "Oh my god her eyes are so beautiful" "Oh my god his hair is so red". Never before have I rolled my eyes so much in a book. I told myself that this is YA; of course the romance is going to be cringe, but I remember reading other YA books that had much better romance written into them. The author could have done better if she spent more time on the part where they're all in Neverland, but this all felt too shoehorned in.

I am also needlessly annoyed by the cover of this book. Nothing about it screams "Peter Pan". I don't even know if the girl on the cover exists in the book, Wendy was definitely not described to have purple hair, also where are her "golden flecked green eyes"? You might be able to tell how annoyed I was hearing that so many times, but I feel like my annoyance is justified. The cover is just misleading. It drew me to the book, but the story was not what I would have expected from the cover. It would have made more sense if they had a red-haired boy on the cover, I don't know why they didn't.

Overall, it could have been worse, but there's not much of a gap between that. It could have been a lot better. I feel that if the author spent a few more months just editing and writing the last part more, instead of rushing the romance and Stjarnin (I was VERY disappointed at how small Tiger Lily's role was in the book, I was expecting some sort of help or fiery tirade from her, but she was just reduced to a mute), I could have given a 4.

Better luck next time, I guess, author.

Overall the story arc in this book was good, but the writing was mediocre. I liked the modern sci-fi twist to the classic Peter Pan story, but at times adherence to the original novel came across very forced. The author did a good job building up the backstory for Wendy, John, and Michael, but the backstory for Hooke, Peter and the rest of the stranded crew was thin at best. Furthermore, the author tried to add in a romance element, but there was absolutely no chemistry between the characters. Particularly <spoiler> between Wendy and Boyce, seriously WTF </spoiler>. The next book should be interesting but I'd want to see a lot of improvement in the writing before I'd pay money for it.

A brilliant retelling of Peter Pan!

I was not prepared to fall for this story as I did! Space and Peter Pan? Two of my least favorite topics and yet here I was falling head over heels in love with this retelling! Sullivan crafted a believable universe, with amazing characters who all possess a unique personality.

The overall plot was somewhat in line with the story we all know, but again Sullivan made this story her own and wove in lore that while might resemble the classic is wholly Second Star lore!

Each side character in the story has a purpose and adds rather than distracts from what is going on, and each character has faults or strengths, and speaking of strength I want to shout out the girl power in this book, too! Wendy grows by leaps and bounds in this novel which I absolutely adored, she is so strong and a perfect role model for girls!

Okay, so I'm going to try to review this as I would in my writing group since it's my first one. The premise behind this book was amazing, being a hardcore Peter Pan buff and big sci-fi nerd, I thought this would be way up my alley. The writer got a little too caught up in her own cleverness by translating Peter Pan to sci-fi and while it was cute at first, it grew wearisome by Smee. Also, immersion was completely lost for me when someone was made the captain of a ship without ever serving on a vessel before on a vastly important mission. I also didn't need to be constantly reminded of the hotness of the characters every single time they walked into a room, we get it. A little research in even the simplest of areas would have gone a long way (Bob Marley did not ever sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" that was Bobby McFerrin and that was seven years after Bob Marley died, so again, immersion breaking.) I know I'm not the demographic for this novel, but when the best lines of your retelling are coming from the original telling, it needs a second glance, I think. I hate sounding harsh for my first review, I love her idea, it's so fun, it just fell really flat for me. I forced myself to finish it because the publishers and netgalley were so kind to provide me with a copy for review, but it was really hard to finish. As an otome game? This would have been 10/10 the best otome game ever!! As a retelling? I'm going to give it 2/5 stars.

4 Futuristic Stars!
Review by Nancy
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog

A modern take on a very classic fairy tale, Second Star, by J.M. Sullivan, was pretty spectacular. As someone who absolutely loves classic fairy tales, I was a little afraid to dive into this one. I was worried that the author would not do Peter Pan justice, but I was pleasantly surprised.

This book is a futuristic version of the Peter Pan we know. Second Star starts with Wendy at a young age— a very brilliant girl studying at the Academy to one day make captain. Then, we jump ahead a few years, the story takes us into the future to an older Wendy who is sent on a rescue mission that leads her to Peter.

Peter and Wendy were magnetic. I found myself thoroughly enjoying the characters. Their connection was pretty instantaneous, it was one of my favorite parts of the book. All the characters portrayed similar characteristics to the original Peter Pan. But Peter was by far my favorite, he was hard not to fall in love with. Very sure of himself, a little cocky, and a lot confident. Wendy was intelligent, strong, and resilient. Together, they made for some very interesting banter that had me laughing and loving the story.

I wish the ending didn't feel so rushed. I wanted the author to have given us more time in Neverland and a little less time at the Academy. Regardless, this was a great read. I am excited to see what the author brings us next.

**ARC provided by the author for an honest review. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. **

This was a nice twist on Peter Pan that still honored a lot from the traditional tale and it was fun to see them woven into a new tale, especially the clever names incorporated with the tech. Pacing with a little disjointed for me with the time-jumps, especially where it wasn't easily labeled with the chapter headings and such large gaps in the beginning that took up almost half the book left the second half feeling very rushed to fit it all in. I adored the characters and felt very connected to them. Hooke fell flat as an antagonist in wake of the Shadow and I wish he'd better earned the villainous reputation Peter Pan said he deserved, or at least had it play out more at the end rather than collapsing into general bad-guy. The whole thing with Boyce threw me and I really didn't like the angle of "he was only mean to her because he likes her" thing. It made me dislike him more and the fact that Wendy wasn't more resistant to that bothered me, she's too strong of a character to be played that way.

The kindle file contained no text. Just images for the chapter headings. I will happily read and review if the publisher and/or net galley can fix this. The epithets were there. The chapter numbers had pretty graphics. I should have selected will not give feedback but I accidentally clicked the wrong button and it wouldn't let me go back and change it.

A really clever re imagining of Peter Pan, with everything from character names to Tink and pixie dust. It all fitted together very smoothly. Of course, it ended on a massive cliffhanger, and if there was an explanation for the time dilation thing I didn't get it, but it's a good story and I'll be watching out for the next one - got to find out what happens next!


There were a few missing words here and there; not enough to make it unreadable, but more than should be in a book this close to completion.