Retellings are sometimes hit or miss for me, but this one was incredible! I love how dark this gets and how so many things are considered innocent when viewing the story through the lens of the Lost Boys are so much darker when seen from the side of the pirates. And Dust essentially being a drug the kids are addicted too was such a good way to show some of the evil of the supposedly genial Peter Pan.

I really enjoyed the setting, both the way the island was described and the real world and enjoyed the character ARCs for Jordan and Baron as both cope with the real world in different ways after they were forced to leave the island when it was revealed the Jordan was actually a girl, not the boy she pretended to be.

There is some really good rep in here too:
- Jordan has a prosthetic arm and was born without full development of her arm
- Alcoholism, dependency, addiction in multiple characters
- Anorexia as a way to stave of development to remain on the island
- Baron is severely visually impaired and losing his glasses leaves him at a disadvantage and he has panic attacks that only started after leaving the island initially
- One of the characters has a stutter
- LGBTQ+ rep

There were a few moments that felt repetitive to me with fight sequences and rehashing of emotions, but things do progress and some lives are lost during this that I think makes the scenes worth it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

The concept of a "dark" Peter Pan retelling was really intriguing to me and in many ways the story told here gripped, buuut in other ways I hated it. I think over all I just really didn't care for the authorial voice here. Paragraphs of explaining things that didn't matter at all or seeing how many words could be used to describe something so simple; I got tired of reading this VERY quickly. The author was also intentionally leaving things out of the story, to be explained later, as if they were big huge reveals and they were so inconsequential. There was no reason to leave the reader so confused the first half. I really hoped I would've liked this more.

I want to thank the author and the NetGalley team for the opportunity to read this book in advance in exchange for a honest review

Unfortunately, this book was not the fit for me. I gave this book “the ol’ college try” as they say and after mustering my way to 25% I had to come to terms it just wasn’t the book for me.

There was nothing inherently wrong with this book or the writing and honestly the storyline was really intriguing BUT the style of writing as well as the main character, Jordan, just made it too challenging to get into. I found I wasn’t able to relate to any of the characters in any meaningful way that would encourage me to continue reading.

My rating is a reflection of the 25% I did read

I really need to start reading synopses better--I did not realize that this was, like, a Captain Hook origin story until I was reading it and kept gong "wait a minute that sounds familiar" lol. Regardless, though, I did like this. I liked that this was a Southeast Asian twist on Peter Pan (retellings of which I normally don't like at all). I liked the world and the writing style a lot. What I didn't care for was the romance. Jordan and Baron's relationship felt...off, a little predatory. The romance between Tier and Chay was the definition of insta-love--if you flipped open the dictionary, a picture of this book would be in there under "insta-love". I felt completely blindsided by the romance arc between these two characters, which is never good lol. I also wish that this was grimdark through to the end--the ending was just so nice and sweet. Not that like everyone had to blow up and die and suffer or something, I just wasn't expecting this ending from a book that is marketed and talked about as Grimdark, haha.

This story was by no means "bad." It was not what I was expecting in terms a retelling. I was often lost in terms of lingo and setting. I felt that several moments a POV switch would have been beneficial.

I liked the premise of this novel, but I struggled with the execution. The characters were hard to relate to, and their flaws overshadowed the plot, making it unclear what motivated them. The pacing was too quick, and it felt like the author was rushing from plot point to plot point without taking the time to explain how or why things were happening. It had promise, but I stopped reading shortly after the first battle scene to focus on other ARCs.

This was a dark tale about addiction, survival, and growing up. PH Low has given us a Peter Pan retelling that puts a unique twist on Neverland (The Island), the cost of being a Lost Boy, and one woman’s quest to return.

Set in a fictional modern world that is sort of mirrors our own in terms of technology, it did take a little time to understand the world and clear out the similarities and differences to really grasps it, but the majority of the time is spent on The Island and learning the rules of how it operates.

I really enjoyed this. The writing was lyrical. There were battles and hard truths for the main characters as they show what it’s like coming to terms with everything’s that’s happened. I thought the commentary on womanhood and growing up was interesting as it’s true that girls do not always get the education we need even about our own bodies.

I thought Peter made a very compelling and otherworldly villain. Jordan was a tough character to love considering everything that happened, but honestly as much as she’d been through who wouldn’t be traumatized.

What a great fantasy ride. I love a Peter Pan retelling and spending any and all time inside Neverland. This was grown up and well thought out, and I love the cover art - wish I had a hard copy!! What fun. Recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Orbit and NetGalley for the ARC!

The legend is true and on a magical island, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys spend days fighting pirates and flying around with Dust. Jordan, a girl who never fit the narrative of her own life, was a Lost Boy. With a shaved head and the magic of Dust, Jordan and her best friend Baron spend years on the island but when it’s revealed Jordan isn’t who she says she is, she is brutally attacked and sent from the island. Nine years later, suffering from Dust withdrawal and struggling in life, Jordan is determined to get back to the island and get revenge. With the help of an unlikely group, Jordan sets in motion a plan to take Tink and end Peter’s Dust supply, however the Island itself might have a different story in mind for them all.

These Deathless Shores is a dark South-East Asian inspired retelling of the Peter Pan story, which on paper felt like it would be right up my alley. The world building was slightly confusing at first, but it got easier as the book went on and once they were on the Island it wasn’t quite as important. Everything about the Island was fascinating, and the dark, ugly twist on the usually sweet and tender Peter Pan legend was really fresh. The biggest difficulty I had in this book was feeling anything for Jordan. As a character, someone with addiction issues and childhood trauma should be a MC you root for, but I felt like sometimes her character fell flat. She was even a character that was gender-noncomforming in a lot of ways, but still difficult to relate to. Baron was more relatable, and as someone who has severe anxiety I felt his panic attacks and fear were very real. Out of the main cast of characters, Chay’s emotional growth and her insecurities and desire to belong was most compelling to me. The writing was beautiful but at times it was hard to get to the heart of what was happening through all of the verbosity, however lovely it was.

I did enjoy this book, though it didn’t grab me immediately. It was a slow burn and it wasn’t until the last third of the book that I really felt invested and excited. All said, this is a super interesting take on a classic and is worth a read if you love darker retellings.

DNF at 30%

I was intrigued at the start but everything in the book felt disjointed and it took me a long time to get my bearings. I like the idea of a south East Asian inspired neverland but I wanted more exploration into it. It was a bit too dark for me and I couldn’t get behind the writing style. I think a reader interested in a dark violent retelling of Peter Pan would enjoy this more

Sadly this one just didn’t hit quite right for me. I DNFed at 35%. While there are a couple things that I thought were cool, overall I just didn’t feel invested in the story.

I love the idea of a Peter Pan retelling, especially where Pan is the villain so I jumped at this book as soon as I heard about it. I still like the idea of that but when adults are pitched against literal children in a fight to the death over (pretty much) drugs, I had a hard time feeling good about it. Of course, the original Peter Pan had children pitched against adults as well but it just feels different when you’re supposed to be on the side of the adults… to me at least.

Something that I felt very early on and that didn’t really change for me was that something about the world building felt off. After discussing it with someone else, I agree that I would’ve preferred for this story to either be set in the real world or for the story to veer off a little more from the original. But I can’t quite say what exactly bothered me about it.

While they felt like a good variety of characters to follow, I also really struggled to connect to any of the main characters. Some of their connections and interactions promised to be interesting but others (like the romance that started where I stopped reading) felt a bit too forced for me. I like how the author didn’t shy away from including dark themes (such as suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and addiction) but somehow all the components of the overall story just didn’t fit well together for me.

I know this all sounds rather vague but I just didn’t see this book working better for me later on either after starting out with these feelings about it. If you’re interested in a dark retelling of Peter Pan set in a secondary world though, then this could be a better fit for you!

I love the concept behind this Peter Pan retelling. It really ties back to the original dark fairy tale. And it was so beautifully tied in with an East Asian setting.

Some of the middle felt a little repetitive but over all a really wonderful read.

I really enjoyed this one! This was a wild ride that kept me captivated throughout with all the POVs. I thought the writing was really great and just so beautifully written.

This adult retelling of Barrie’s Peter Pan follows two former Lost Boys, Jordan and Baron, who’ve grown up and returned to the real world but have found themselves alien in it. Struggling to survive and failing to cope, they return to the Island at Jordan’s urging and enact a bloody plan to make whatever’s left of their lives worth living: or die trying. I found Low’s exploration of what it means to really grow up––and what choices you might have to make to do so––poignant and compelling. This is a breathtaking, devastating, fever-dream of a story. Don’t miss it.

This is not my first Peter Pan retelling/reimagining but I do think it’s one of the more unique twists on the classic that I’ve read. While I expected a dark and enigmatic story, I didn’t anticipate the stark contrast (and yet ironic similarities) between the futuristic Outside world and the primitive Island occupied by Peter and his Lost Boys. With home lives marred by neglect and abuse and years of their childhood steeped in bloodshed and violence on the Island, I really believed our main characters as they struggled to decide which world felt most like the place that would give them a chance at a life worth living.

The writing itself was intricate and songlike, lulling a reader into this impossibly beautiful and terrible story with ease. The relationship between Jordan and Baron was heart-rending and you really do root for both characters to find their way to mutual understanding as they are so clearly are meant to do. Their internal monologues are perfection! Despite their previous stint pretending to be Twins, their personalities play off each other so well, a true yin and yang.

My main critique is that it was difficult to believe/accept that regular non-magical children would not be terrified by heinous acts of violence let alone be the perpetrators themselves. These children remember their lives on the Outside, however faintly. They enjoy being doted on and cared for, they are fun-loving and, in many cases, so, so young. What about Peter or the Island or the magic connecting the two rewires children to be unaffected by and even take pleasure in harming, torturing, and killing? A tough hurdle to clear.

While immersive in every aspect, I would have loved to understand more about the magic system and how the story itself influences it (e.g. is the island sentient?), how Peter chooses the children he takes back to the Island, and how “belief” is connected to the characters’ outcomes and abilities (which seems to be a thing even in the Outside world?)

Like many classic fairy tales, this one lacked a happily ever after but did end with a satisfying albeit open-ended conclusion, and relief for the characters who realize that there could be an “After” after all.

I have been savoring this book for weeks, and i am saddddddd it is over. Thanks, netgalley and orbit for the ARC! And i managed to get this review out on publication day!

You know the story- all children grow up, except one. Jordan has never forgiven herself, her sister or her "twin" former lost boy Baron for how she had to leave the island and her heartless childhood behind. After struggling for years without dust and without magic in the outside world, living mean and fighting meaner, she returns to the island to do what she feels she must- kill Peter.

I LOVED this book. I have read about a million peter pan retellings (most of them AWFUL) but never an adult return to neverland, with a vengeance. The authors style walked the line between really poetic and really grotesque in a way that i really liked. I think the tension inside Jordan, wether it be with her gender, her feelings of unworthiness, the feelings she has for baron, propel this story to another level, and the softer narratives of baron and chay, while both still brutal, help to smoth the story into something powerful and beautiful.

Adding this to the pile of books i will read again and again and again.

(This is a 4.5 star, but of course, goodreads cant let us have a half.)

I was so excited for this ARC, and utterly smitten with the beautiful cover, but this one is better suited for a different audience than me. I did enjoy the author's darkly gorgeous writing style, but the plot and characters were very different from what I expected of a Peter Pan retelling.

Jordan was once a lost boy, but exiled to the Outside once her maturity revealed she had reached menarche. She spends years battling addiction and withdrawals, along with anger at betrayal by her younger sister who remained on the island. She convinces her former island companion Baron to accompany her on a journey of revenge against Peter.

This book read somewhat like a long list of issues related to representation (addiction, eating disorder, depression/anxiety, missing limb, abuse, several other) rather than an actual story? There were so many descriptions of withdrawal and other issues that they overwhelmed any sort of plot. Peter and Tinkerbell were peripheral characters without any sort of development, and the island was briefly described as somewhat sentient without much exploration of that.

I would absolutely read other writings by this author because the prose was so promising. Please read trigger warnings before diving into this, especially around substance abuse and anorexia.

Thank you so much to Orbit Books and Netgalley for this ARC to review!

This is my first Peter Pan/Captain Hook retelling and I LOVED IT. It gave me such nostalgia and I loved the dark spin on it. It had addiction and eating disorder representation, so make sure you are checking the trigger warnings.

Have you ever wondered how a fairytale would look if the good guy was actually the villain? This is what we get here - Peter is the bad guy here. Jordan, the FMC and ultimately Captain Hook, used to be a Lost Boy but escaped the island, only to struggle with Dust withdrawal and interest in returning with her friend Baron, who was a Lost Boy with her. Jordan and Baron team up with the pirates to help take down Peter & the Lost Boys, who are hoarding the Dust supplies and have a lust for bloodshed.

My only complaint is that the romance was a bit lacking here - the relationship between Jordan and Baron was uncomfy for me. It kind of seemed like Jordan was stringing Baron along for companionship and there didn't really seem to be a spark. I would have preferred if the romance was just left out or if there were different love interests for each of them.

Defintely recommend this book, though! Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for an eARC in exchange for my honest review!

These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low introduces a new genre-bending retelling of Peter Pan retelling where Peter is the villain. The story follows two former Lost Boys of his who return to the Island to kill Peter and kidnap Tink because she's the source of an addictive substance known as Dust.

First off, I really loved how this version of Peter Pan treats the Island as its own sentient character with its own will and POV. I’ve got to say, the writing in these sections was so utterly breathtaking and poetic, and this is where the book truly shined for me.

However, there's a vagueness in the worldbuilding that bugged me. We get hints of political conflicts and a new pantheon of gods in the Outside world. However, I wish those elements had been either cut out or fleshed out and elaborated on more because the worldbuilding as it stands feels muddled and half-baked.

On top of that, the characters and their romances unfortunately felt flat and underdeveloped for me. Perhaps the only three-dimensional character of the bunch was Chay, the current surrogate mother of the Lost Boys, who goes to desperate lengths to stay on the Island.

Lastly, I wasn't a fan of the excessive use of epigraphs every few chapters, quoting modern books like Six of Crows. One, I found this incredibly distracting and it kept pulling me out of the world. Two, I feel like Low's writing is so achingly gorgeous on its own that they don't need to rely on the words of other authors. Heck, having little bits of lore about the Island or the Outside used in the epigraphs instead might've been a nice touch.

These Deathless Shores is a dark Peter Pan/Hook retelling that will leave you constantly rethinking what you know of the tale. Low created a fascinating tale that had me hooked from the very beginning despite the cast of overall unlikable characters. Who’s the hero in a story when they’re all arguably villains. I always find the villain stories interesting especially when delving into what turned them down the path, so learning a variation of Hook’s origin was right up my alley. The world building and magical rules on the island were well developed. While the characters all had their clear flaws, they were also well crafted which I really appreciated. The plot pacing, though, I think was where this could have used a little tweaking. The story started out strong, but once on the island, the story became repetitive with the different skirmishes. While they all had their part to play for the overall story, I wish the themes could have been presented in a varying way. This book deals with some very dark and triggering themes, so I strongly recommend looking up trigger warnings before starting. Overall, though, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to those interested in reading.