This book was ok. I liked that it was a peterpan retelling but it took me a little bit to get used to it all being sci fi and by the time i got used to it the book had ended, I would have prefered the book to be longer with much more detail and world/character building. though i do like the concept and how different it is to the original story.

I could not get into this book. While well-written, I did not realize that this book was so futuristic before attempting to read it. I did not finish this book though it was well-written, as already mentioned, and would be good for other readers.

Very short, more of a prequel or origin story than retelling of the whole of 'Peter Pan'. Cyberspace, dystopian, futuristic sci-fi telling of the creation of a hologrammatic/VR 'Neverland' island as a refuge, a place of safety and escape and a place to be able to 'fly' (the concept of flight here, whilst looking like a literal meaning, as the character Peter creates the whole place for originally wants to be a pilot, is deeper and symbolic - flying is freedom and safety to simply be who and whatever you are, joyfully). Enjoyable enough, had lump in my throat in a couple of places and it's always nice to see a book for teens including a variety of gender/sexuality/identity descriptors - and futuristic sci-fi cyber plots which delve into the concept of consciousness, humanity or essential life of an entity. I didn't find the story to be at all complicated or confusing, as I've seen other reviews saying, all the information you need is given. Yes might have been good to be fleshed out some more before publication, perhaps a little more background and world building, but it does stand perfectly well as it is. Though we are left with many questions, we know enough to understand why Peter does what he does (and the inherent issues which then need facing) - and perhaps this is the beginning of a series? I think I would be happier to know I will be able read a follow up to learn more about how this story builds and develops.

This book wasn't my cup of tea. It didn't hit home and i kinda just skimmed towards the end. Had a lot of potential, but not the best re-telling i've ever got my hands on.

I feel as though it's difficult to review a queer Peter Pan retelling without at least referencing Lost Boi and Peter Darling, but honestly this book is like neither one of them. While it's dystopian as fuck, it doesn't exist in the real world like Lost Boi, but nor is it in fantasy land like Peter Darling.

That said, there is a Neverland. Of course there's a Neverland. It's just one I've never seen before.

Mir is a new character, but I fell in love with them immediately. Like, no kidding; page one and I'm there. Mir is nonbinary, but placed with the boys. Peter is an incredibly savvy trans tech-head who has managed to find a way of communicating between their pods. Pods they have been put into, by the way, so that they'll sleep and so lessen the amount of oxygen they need.

Let me say: I loved the world of this book. I genuinely hope that Jenn revisits this world again with other characters sometime, cause I would love to understand more about the war, and maybe the adults in the world, and the politics that got them to this point.

That said, what context we got was more than enough for this story. Mir loves Peter, loves the hideaway the two of them share, loves their relationship. The only thing they are not satisfied with is this: They want to fly. And, in the current world, the only way to fly is to be a pilot. So they enlist in the war.

This throws Peter into a spiral, because they are afraid that Mir is going to die, and that Peter will have to live without them. So, with his incredibly good ability with technology and coding, he makes a place where their physical bodies can be transported, that's very close to this world, except for one thing: belief leads to people there being able to fly.

The relationship between James and Peter was different than I might have expected, though I'm not going to lie; I would have loved to see a polyamorous relationship spring up between the two of them and Mir. I loved that Wendy, or Gwen as she requests to be called, ends up in a relationship with Tink, who's the Interface of the world.

This is all just so cleverly done. All the points one would want to hit in a Peter Pan retelling are there, and the fact that it's also so unlike anything else I have read just shows off the skill Jenn has as a writer.

(3.5 stars, i think)

did you read peter pan but you wished peter was trans so you read peter darling but then you wished tinkerbell was an artificial intelligence and everything is all cyberpunk and futuristic?

THEN THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU!

i thought it was a super awesome concept, but it wasn't quite developed enough. i feel like the author had a cool idea and ran with it but didn't think too much about what precisely was going on, which also accounts for its shortness. i think it would have worked better if it was longer and had more world-building, but it was still pretty enjoyable and i really liked the writing. but i had a big problem with the way everything was resolved, because at the end of the day they're still living in a simulation that doesn't really exist.

Not interested in this at all anymore, and I am not interested in providing a review.

Sorry but I couldn't get into the book at all. I tried though, I'm so sorry for my ADD brain.

There was no option to download it to my Kindle so I was unable to read it.

Goodreads Synopsis:
In a futuristic world, Neverland is a holomatrix, Hook is a cyborg, and Tinker Bell is an automated computer interface.

Peter is desperate to save his lover from a military draft that, unbeknownst to him, Mir volunteered for because they are desperate to be able to fly. So, naturally, Peter programs an entire island—Neverland—as a refuge where Mir can fly without having to fight in a war.

But he doesn’t locate Mir right away; instead, he fights for control of the island with automated interface Tinker Bell, and in his attempts to find Mir, others arrive on the island. But Peter’s single-minded focus on Mir generates repercussions for everyone.

My Review:
The reason I chose to look at this book in the first place, was the cover. It really stood out to me, and so did the description. In the future, oxygen is in such demise that poor people have to sleep in pods so that they don't have to breathe. Sleeping in these pods, however, will randomly put you into the military. Peter and Mir are just children, barely sixteen and have so much to worry about. Mir is chosen one night, and although they didn't tell Peter, they secretly signed up to the military so that they could fly. Peter, desperate to keep Mir safe, creates a special VR program in their safe space refuge.

Things don't go as planned, and a lot happened in this short book. Peter creates the island and nicknames it Neverland, and makes a kind of interface robot to help keep it running while he's inside trying to find Mir. I'm not sure where the story is set, but If I had to guess I would say space because of the lack of oxygen, anti gravity workouts, and hologram sunrises, sunsets, and night skies with the moon in it. I really enjoyed reading this, and the characters are lifelike. The world is so interesting that I don't really worry about having little to no knowledge about it before hand. Peter made the only world that counts. I didn't want to put this book down, in case I missed something. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon, and another link to the authors twitter.

https://www.amazon.ca/Lost-Boy-Found-Jenn-Polish-ebook/dp/B07B9GL1N6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521663075&sr=8-1&keywords=Lost+Boy%2C+Found+Boy+by+Jenn+Polish

https://twitter.com/jpolishwrites?lang=en

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
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I was excited for this story; illuminae meets neverland - sounds perfect. Unfortunately it wasn't flushed out enough for me to get an overall great grasp on what was really going on, and it's sub-title is the story of Captain Hook but that's not how I saw this story at all (It's Peter's).

Peter lives in a futuristic world, where his best friend and love of his life, Mir is being sent to war. To escape this, Peter sets up a world via Virtual Reality (accidentally, it creates an actual reality) so that he and Mir can escape the life they've been leading. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out the way Peter expected and we meet the usual characters in some unusual ways.

Overall, it was a cute story but it was confusing in initial set up. Not your typical Neverland story, but if you think enough happy thoughts, you can fly away with this one.

I'm so sorry to say that I just didn't get on with this book. I was really excited for the concept, because I love the Peter Pan story. But I don't think the characters or the setting/situation was set up well enough and I lost interest fairly quickly. I needed to know why this world was different from any other dystopian world and I just didn't get that.
Such a shame that this didn't work out, I think the idea was fab and I praise the diversity in the characters. For me, I just needed to connect with the plot more.

Lost Boy, Found Boy is science-fiction fairytale-retelling with an extremely interesting concept, but falls over a little bit in its execution.

There are some really great LGBTQIA+ inclusions - various characters identify as trans, non-binary, asexual, lesbian and bisexual - and the biggest shame is that the story is not long enough to spend any time developing these relationships further, because they’re utterly fascinating to read.

While most of the characters aren’t all that well-developed, I did like some of the typical ‘Peter Pan’ traits that Peter retained, including a child-like frustration with his world and the fact that he takes his frustrations out on everyone around him, being unable to cope with them himself.

For the most part, while I loved the idea, I found the world building to be lacking substantial depth in order to fully understand the world that these characters inhabit, which in turn is made more difficult to understand because the characters also find themselves immersed within a computer program.

Overall, great concept, I just wish it had been a little more fleshed out on the page. 2.75 stars.

Lost Boy, Found Boy is a science fiction reimagining of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan where Neverland is a computer program, and Tinker Bell, its interface. In Mir and Peter’s world, boys are snatched from their pods and enlisted into the army to fight in a dangerous battle against an unknown foe. Little did Peter know, Mir volunteered to join because those who are chosen are given the ability to fly. In order to save Mir from the dangers of battle, Peter creates Neverland, a place where Mir will be able to fly without jeopardizing Mir’s safety. But Neverland is more than what Peter imagined. Suddenly, the island takes on a life of its own, and its interface, Tinker Bell begins to open portals to the outside world. As Neverland’s population grows, Mir is nowhere to be found. As the island begins to develop, Tinker Bell becomes overloaded with data. Will Peter be able to find Mir and keep his island alive?
This was a rather odd version of Peter Pan that infuses artificial intelligence and technology into a strange mixture. When I first began reading, the opening completely hooked me in. Boys are placed in pods for their safety as the oxygen is cut off for the night. The boys fear being branded and subsequently chosen to enter into the war. The dystopian setting blended with science fiction had me sold. But, as the story went on, I found myself disconnected from the events with very little satisfaction when I reached the conclusion. I do believe the writing itself has great potential. The problem was in the execution.
As this novella is rather short, there really isn’t a great amount of character development or plot to encompass the entire storyline. The storyline would have fared better if Peter and Mir’s characters were a little more fleshed out. I also wished I knew more about the war Mir decides to join. For instance, who are they fighting? Why are children/young adults chosen? Why does Mir want to fly so much even if it means that Mir might die as a result? I have no clue, and I will never know.
The secondary characters seemed to be just “there” without any real purpose. When James (Hook) was introduced into the story, I figured “it’s about time there was a villain.” James is a half-human and half-robot who used to fight in the war. He has lost all sense of his identity, and his entire personality seems to be focused around his jealousy of Mir. In the end, it seemed as if he was only there to reinforce that this is a retelling of Peter Pan. Character with a hook? check. Honestly, this novella probably wouldn’t be readable if the reader had never heard of Peter Pan. While this is highly unlikely since Peter Pan is a well-known novel that has been adapted into various mediums many times. Yet, when a well-known story is retold, the story should be able to speak for itself without mooching off the original.
All in all, I was disappointed by Lost Boy, Found Boy. The idea of Neverland being a computer generated setting was very intriguing, but the overall world-building and lack of personality in the characters made this novella incomplete. I would recommend this book to those who are looking for representations of LGBTQ characters or are looking for a non-binary character.
*I received Lost Boy, Found Boy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

DNF I got to about 25% of the way through this book and I was so very confused. I didn't really know what was happening and I feel like everything could have been set up better.

I'm not really into fantasy, but I couldn't resist giving this retelling of Peter Pan a try. Technology plus a dystopian feel? That sounds more like sci-fi to me, the kind of book I reach for!

Polish holds true to many of the original Peter Pan character representations and themes, but I wish it hadn't been quite as obvious as it was. Maybe in a longer work there would have been time to allow the reader to figure it out on their own. This was a fast, page-turner kind of read, but it also bordered on feeling rushed. I would have loved a longer book with more detail and more background. I had a lot of questions about the world that were never addressed, which was frustrating since I enjoyed the premise so much.

The loveliness of Polish's writing style was a refreshing contrast to the harshness of the world. And their trans and nonbinary representations were fantastic. It's something you notice right away, then forget because it feels so natural and perfect. You just can't beat #ownvoices stories.

3.5 stars

‘Lost Boy, Found Boy’ is a short work of science fiction loosely based upon characters from ‘Peter Pan.’ Author Polish has included familiar character names and elements, while adding an original plot and making some changes to the characters.

We start off with Peter and his enbyfriend Mir. Circumstances are vague, but the story clearly takes place in the future, after Earth is no longer habitable, oxygen is hard to come by, and a war is being fought. Peter wakes one morning to learn that Mir has volunteered for the war effort, desperately wanting to fly. Peter, master programmer and hacker that he is, copes with Mir’s leaving by creating a virtual world in which their physical bodies can safely inhabit. Peter thinks he’s programed the interface in such a way that not only would he and Mir be able to fly in this created space, Neverland, but also that Mir’s memory would be altered to forget leaving Peter to join the war. Peter wants nothing more than to be reunited with his paramour and for the pair to be left alone together.

Peter’s overestimation of his programming abilities causes some issues. First a cyborg with a hook shows up, a boy with some flesh left, but whose veins have been replaced with wires by the war effort. Then Gwen shows up, and names the interface Tinker Bell, after the noises it/she makes when communicating. Then Gwen and Tink seem to grow close, and Hook seems to have a crush on Peter. As Peter urges Tink on to find the correct human companion, Mir, Tink brings in Jon, Michael, Nibs, and Slightly; boys lost to the war effort who all seem to have memory issues upon entering Neverland through Tink’s portal. One last desperate attempt brings Mir to Peter, at the height of memory problems and interface overloads.

Will Mir and Peter remember each other and get to live happily ever after? Will Tink overload and send all the children back to the horrible war? Find out on March 19th.

I voluntarily read a Review Copy of this book. All opinions stated are solely my own and no one else’s.

I feel like this book is a great idea but kind of failed in the overall execution.

“Lost Boy, Found Boy”, tells the story of Peter a boy desperate to save his love Mir from war and uses his programming skills to make their secret hideaway a bit bigger turning it into Neverland, an island filled with whatever his mind can think up, but when a few new faces make their way onto the island with problems of their own Peter is forced to make a decision that could destroy Neverland once and for all and take Mir’s love for him with it.

The futuristic take on the Peter Pan story was really cool and I liked seeing a bit of the coding mixed in among the dialogue, however, there was a lot of things I was confused on and I’m not sure if it’s intentionally ambiguous in order to keep the book short and to the point but I really think this concept would have benefited with a few more chapters just to explain how these people ended up where they were and what the war is in order to fully explain the overall need to create something separate. I get the slight nod to the original story as an overreaching theme but I still think a bit more exposition could have gone a long way.

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**