A twisty story about love, loss, and lies, this contemporary oceanside adventure is tinged with a touch of dark magic as it follows seventeen-year-old Wendy Darling on a search for her missing surfer brothers. Wendy’s journey leads her to a mysterious hidden cove inhabited by a tribe of young renegade surfers, most of them runaways like her brothers. Wendy is instantly drawn to the cove’s … cove’s charismatic leader, Pete, but her search also points her toward his nemesis, the drug-dealing Jas. Enigmatic, dangerous, and handsome, Jas pulls Wendy in even as she’s falling hard for Pete. A radical reinvention of J. M. Barrie’s classic tale, Second Star is an irresistible summer romance about two young men who have yet to grow up and the troubled beauty trapped between them.
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I love the old classic stories that we have all heard or read when we were growing up. Second Star is a modernized retelling of one of my very favorites, Peter Pan. I enjoyed the way that this author set this wonderful tale in modern times and had the characters face modern problems, all while keeping the basic foundation of the original.
This story does not have the scary alligator or Captain Hook that we see as the evil components of the older tale, but Second Star does have it’s own set of evil influences. This retelling has enough similarities to the original story that I was nostalgically reminded of the classic, with all of the old familiar and loved characters.
I was given the book via NetGalley for review – thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishing for the opportunity to give it a whirl.
Second Star by Alyssa Sheinmel is pitched as a twist on Peter Pan, and touted as a “radical reinvention of a classic” which would be great . . . except it really wasn’t. And I could get past the fact that it wasn’t really Peter Pan, though there were vague references to the beloved children’s classic, because the concept still seemed cool . . . for a while.
In Second Star, Wendy Darling is searching for her lost, surfer brothers who the entire world has written off as dead. She meets the charismatic surfer, Pete, whose love of flying on the waves, captivates Wendy. There is fiesty Belle, who is a side-kick to Pete, but also his ex-girlfriend (she dislikes Wendy from the get-go). And then there is Jas (a shadow-version of Hook), a young drug-dealing surfer whose best-selling hallucinogen is known as “dust.” Jas and Pete used to be friends, seeking the perfect wave like POINT BREAK, but Jas starts dealing to fund their dreams of chasing the ultimate curl. That’s when Pete kicks Jas to the other side of their beachy paradise known as Kensington, and the line in the sand is drawn.
And yup – I could get down with all those crazy twists . . . even when Wendy ditches her love for Pete for that of Jas, (yes – Wendy has the hots for Hook). I could get down with all those twists, because I realized this wasn’t Peter Pan AT ALL. This was a story about a girl searching for her brothers, but gets mixed up in a band of surfing-obsessed misfits and runaways.
The writing was well done, the setting realistic (I live a mile from the Atlantic – Sheinmel nailed the beach stuff), and the story line interesting. Unfortunately, I really wanted to leave Second Star back in the Milky Way by the time I hit the half-way mark. I finished it, I did, but for me this story just didn’t have the spark and passion that I needed it to have.
I was hoping for an un-put-downable read. Instead I got a story that felt like homework, because of one missing piece: the characters had no depth.
None of the characters had any voice – any dimension – save for Belle. Wendy sounded like Pete and Jas. She falls for BOTH of them, one right after the other. And I can do the insta-love thing, but for me, it didn’t make SENSE. I didn’t see the spark between the characters, I didn’t see the passion or desperation for the truth, and I didn’t FEEL Wendy at all. She could have been eaten by a great white, and I wouldn’t have spared a tear . . . I’m not sure Pete would have either.
I do give the author credit however – for trying to be bold and rewrite a major, childhood classic. I LOVE the idea of it and I loved her twisted view of the story. But there wasn’t enough similarity to Peter Pan to make it a remake, and there wasn’t any voice or depth to the characters to make me cheer them on. It is absolutely well written, but I know my 13-year-old will be bored inside of the first 10 chapters.
This story has some really strong moments – great vivid scenes that I loved. And if used by schools, it will make for interesting discussions on the similarities and contrasts with the real Peter Pan.
But for me, the story fell flat . . . kind of like the waves at low tide.