By Alyssa B. Sheinmel
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
Format: eBook
Source: NetGalley
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
To Sum It Up: It’s been nine months since Wendy Darling’s younger brothers, John and Michael, disappeared. Her parents are struggling to come to terms with the police’s assumption that the boys drowned while surfing, but Wendy refuses to believe they’re gone. She sets out on her own search to find them, hoping that following the waves will lead her to her brothers.
Review: I’m going to start by saying that I have some very mixed feelings about Second Star, even after taking a few days to mull it over before sitting down to write the review. The novel is a reimagining of Peter Pan, with a protagonist named Wendy Darling who goes searching for her two missing surfer brothers, John and Michael. Wendy believes that her best chance of finding them is wherever the biggest waves are, and her travels bring her to a small group of surfers led by the mysterious Pete. While the surfing spin on the original tale was interesting, Wendy’s actions throughout Second Star posed a huge problem for me. I spent almost the entire book frustrated with her and firmly decided on what I was going to rate the book overall. The ending, however, threw a bit of a wrench in that because, although it stopped well short of justifying Wendy’s behavior, it did cast her character in a slightly different light. Slightly.
Second Star began strongly enough; I quickly became invested in the search for John and Michael, and I gave Wendy credit for striking out on her own to find them. Things started unraveling quickly, though, with Wendy making one head-shaking choice after another. Assist with a burglary? Sure, if it leads to a clue about John and Michael. Take drugs? Sure, if it leads to a clue about John and Michael. I could not wrap my head around Wendy’s logic, or lack thereof, really, no matter how much she tried to rationalize some of her poorer decisions as the means to finding her brothers. That’s another thing—as the tie that’s supposed to bind this whole story together, I never felt depth to Wendy’s relationship with John and Michael. Okay, I realize how coldhearted I sound saying that, but I thought Wendy kept getting sidetracked by her adventures with Pete and Jas, another surfer whom I’ll discuss in a minute. Sometimes John and Michael seemed like an afterthought, referenced whenever Wendy remembered that she was supposed to be looking for them.
The other major issue I had with Second Star was the insta-love. Times two. Wendy finds herself torn between Pete and Jas, both of questionable character and, surprise, not exactly best friends. What I really couldn’t cope with was how Wendy would madly be in love with whomever she happened to be with at the time. If she was in Pete’s company, Pete was her guy; if she was with Jas, Jas was her guy. Personally, I didn’t think either made a particularly good love interest, both in the sense of having chemistry with Wendy and, um, being law-abiding citizens.
Now to address that ending. It’s a departure from the rest of the novel, which reads like a contemporary up until that point. But—the ending actually makes sense for a Peter Pan retelling, if that makes sense. It was a fitting touch, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to alter my feelings toward the other aspects of the book that bothered me.
All in All: This was not the Peter Pan retelling I’d hoped for.
