Unhooked (A YA Book Review)

Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell

This isn’t so much a retelling as a turned-on its head version of Peter Pan. Gwendolyn has put up with her mother’s constant moving and babbling about monsters that she herself cannot see. Just as she’s feeling she should begin to live her own life, she and her best friend are kidnapped during the night. When Gwen wakes up, she finds herself on a pirate ship with Rowan, fulfilling the role of Captain Hook. Soon she’s rescued by Pan, but quickly learns everything she thought about good and bad is anything but.

The best parts of this story are in the bits I didn’t want to spoil. At times, Gwen is annoying because she holds Rowan and Pan to what I think the reader will see as very obvious double standards. I liked the twists and turns involving the Dark Ones and the Fey, but what really kept me turning the pages was Rowan’s fate and if Gwen would finally admit what she was stubbornly blind to. Rowan is a wonderfully, well-developed anti-hero. Overall this book is 3.8/5 stars for me, bumped up to 4 on Goodreads.