I really wanted to love this book. If I see a peter pan Retelling I always want to read it. This book just seemed so rushed. It read like a rough draft to me. No details, no real descriptions just beginning... middle... end.

Wonderful retelling of Peter Pan. I loved this heartbreaking story. Peter is deliciously wicked but Captain Hook is so much more than usual.

I am a sucker for retellings, but I honestly worried a little going in that Peter Pan had already been pretty well mined for material. Especially so if Parry planned to go anywhere dark with this; just in the last 5 years or so, it seems like I've encountered an awful lot of short stories taking the more unsettling elements of Peter Pan (which, to be fair, don't require much plumbing of depths to get to) and gone *exceedingly*, disturbing places with them.

But Parry's brilliance is criminally under-recognized, she's written two 5-star-for-me books (for which my entirely subjective criterium is something like "changed who I am or how I look at the world"), she wrote my favorite book that I read in 2023 (The Magician's Daughter), and I've yet to read anything that came from her brain that I didn't really, really enjoy the hell out of. Plus her fiction almost always includes some element of commentary on stories and what they mean to people and how stories and people shape each other, for which I have a major soft spot.

So I figured that if she were doing something with Peter Pan, I'd want to read it even if I were feeling kind of over Peter Pan at the moment. And I am so glad I did. It's weird, and it's different, and yes it's got pathos but where other "Peter Pan but darker" renderings often revel in a monstrous take on Peter and fairies, Parry has more compassion for her characters, and that nuance allows characters be be a bit tragic rather than twisted. Nobody is awful just for shock value, which makes such a difference. And yes, there are thoughts about what stories are to us (and what we do to stories, as well).

Parry's work often makes me cry but in a way that I end up being so grateful for. It's never what I expect but somehow always what I want. I desperately hope more people discover this author's work, and this novella is a gem, so I hope you'll give it a try.

Heartless by HG Parry. (Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.) I haven’t read Peter Pan or watched the movie recently but this dark & haunting retelling still got to me in the best of ways. Peter & James Hook meet in a workhouse & we gradually learn how James becomes Pirate Hook & how they all reach Neverland. I didn’t “love & adore” this book but I’m still thinking about it which means something too. This is my second book by HG Parry & I definitely want to read more. Fantasy fans, check out The Magician’s Daughter! 4 ⭐️. Out 01/31.

Quick book that is a retelling of Peter Pan & Captain Hook & consequences of childish stories. Even though it was short (approx 150p), it still punched some substance.

James is a newly-orphaned seven year old when he moves into a London workhouse. While grieving the loss of his mother, James is befriended by Peter, a curious, social, at times cruel ten year old. Peter tends to lose interest in people easily and become distracted by anything new. But there’s one thing that holds Peter’s interest – the stories James tells each night. Once James runs out of stories he learned from his mother, he creates new ones about a place called Neverland, with pirates, fairies, and endless adventures. The stories continue to grow until one night when James watches Peter disappear out the window following a bright light. James cries out to go too, but his jump out the window meets gravity instead of magic.

Now a grown man, James has never forgotten his friend Peter and what he saw that night. James takes to the seas to live out some of his childhood stories. While out on a whaling excursion, James sees that same light he saw all those years ago, and he will stop at nothing to follow it. But what he finds is not the land of mischief and adventure he dreamed up as a child but something more dark and sinister.

I’m a sucker for a fairy tale re-telling, and for Peter Pan-related stories in particular. This was more of a Neverland/Captain Hook origin story, with Peter being a very important but secondary character. The villain we all know is given some humanity. The Peter that we know is shown not as a fun-loving boy so much as a selfish, immature brat. The way that James tries to help and Peter’s subsequent response is heart-breaking. This short story is a must for any Neverland fan, but don’t expect the carefree world that J.M. Barrie created.

This was a wonderful reimagining of the relationship between Captain Hook and Peter Pan. Taking place in, most likely, Industrial London, the short story follows James as he tries to find his friend Peter after he disappears one night. 🔍

James is an interesting take on the notorious villain, Captain Hook. Here, he has a life as a hired sailor and a love that stands the rest of time as well as patience on her end. His loss of Peter drives him to make decisions that he might not have made had Peter actually taken the chance to take James with him to Neverland. His ending is pretty sad after the events of the short story, and you can see how sometimes it’s best to not wish for things as a child. ✨

Peter is what I expected for a never-aging boy: spoiled and stubborn. Parry does a wonderful job of showing not only Peter’s backstory and trauma through abandonment, but also how the fairies he’s grown up with and raised by have affected his perspective of the world. Really, he becomes a rather tragic figure in this reminding and I honestly like that portrayal of this iconic character.🧚

Overall, I thought this was a lovely short story/retelling of these two characters and would definitely recommend to those who love retellings and/Peter Pan inspired stories. 🐊

Thank you again to NetGalley and Subterranean Press for accepting my request to read in exchange for an honest review, and to the author, H. G. Parry, for creating such a wonderful Captain Hook tale. ❤️

Overall: 4/5 ⭐️

Thank you NetGalley, H. G. Parry, and Subterranean Press for allowing me to read an advanced copy of Heartless in exchange for an honest review. I received an advanced reader copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I always enjoy a good retelling of a classic fairytale. Heartless is beautifully done. It tells the story of how James Hook and Peter Pan meet as children and develop into their given characters. It explains how Neverland was created by the stories told by James to Peter. We get to meet Gwendolyn Darling and learn how James has a connection to the Darling family we all know. The villian's tale is not always black and white. There is a lot of heartbreak along the way. This is a very short book, but there is an enormous amount of emotions within it.

A Peter Pan deconstruction/origin story, "Heartless" is quirky, surprisingly moving, and clever. You needn't have read the original Peter Pan book/play to "get" this—personally I was familiar only with the Disney novelization I'd read when I was a kid—though it is a bit of a thrill when we first meet Gwendolyn Darling, for instance, or wonder at orphan Peter's clockwork heart. The tone is deceptively comforting, the sort you'd expect from a fairy tale for grownups, and the plotting is perfectly paced. And as was equally apparent in her previous book "The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep," author H.G. Parry is an adroit reader as well as a gifted writer.

Thank you, Subterranean Press and NetGalley, for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the book a lot. It was a great mix of reimagined and the original fairy tale. It was very paced with multiple time skips. There’s a plot twist towards the end that I was not a fan of, but that’s a personal opinion. Overall the book was well written and engaging.

DNF at 25%, unfortunately this book was just not for me, I was bored by it and found the spin on the original tale of Peter Pan to be nothing new.

"At the age of seven, in a London workhouse, newly-orphaned James meets ten-year-old Peter. Mysterious, mercurial, thoughtless to the point of cruelty, Peter nonetheless takes a liking to James. The two forge a strange friendship, bound together by their shared love of stories - stories of a magical island called Neverland, where they adventure as the pirate James Hook and the child-king Peter Pan. But one fateful night, Peter vanishes from his bed, and in the morning James is found lying alone and broken in the courtyard outside. Only James saw Peter fly from the workhouse roof in pursuit of a star, and nobody but James believes that the star was a fairy. Over twenty years later, on the deck of a whaling ship in the frozen wastes of the Arctic, First Mate James Hook sees the same star again. James's obsession with finding his childhood friend will lead him to mutiny and murder, beyond the edges of the world, and finally to an island that shouldn't exist. But neither Neverland nor Peter are what they appear. A new story is about to begin, and not all stories have happy endings."

I will literally read anything put out by Subterranean Press, but the fact that it's written by H.G. Parry and is a retelling of Peter Pan, I have to read it now.

H.G. Parry blew me away with her previous 19th century-inspired fantasy, The Magician's Daughter, but I was less compelled by this aged-up Peter Pan retelling. For starters, the story is just hard to get right: I don't think I've seen a single adaptation that has felt both original and authentic. This version focuses on the origin story of Captain Hook, framed as a workhouse orphan with grand dreams of success and finding his long lost friend, a flying boy named Peter. I don't think a novella is the right venue for Parry or this story: I can tell she's having to hold herself back from introducing history and world-building that makes the story simultaneously rushed and incomplete. I also wan't a huge fan of the romance between Hook and the Darling's mother, which adds an interesting twist but is overall not especially interesting.

I adored this. It was a little slow going at first, but then it picked up very quickly and didn’t relent until the end. This is a very imaginative retelling of Peter Pan, but it’s not the tame Disney version. Oh, no. It’s like unto the original fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, where the little mermaid gets her human legs, but every step she takes feels like broken glass piercing her feet. This tale is not for little kids. Captain Hook has a lot more backstory, and you almost feel sorry for him a few times. Hook has the last laugh, though, and he writes the ending of Neverland with his own blood.

I highly recommend this—just don’t expect raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you told me a Peter Pan variant would make me weep, I wouldn't have believed you. Have the tissues ready because this is a captivating and sometimes heart-breaking story that follows Peter Pan and James Hook from the workhouse to Neverland and beyond.

Neverland is created by James, who tells Peter adventure stories during the cold nights at a miserable, London workhouse. One night, James follows Peter onto the roof and tries to follow as Peter flies away. James spends months as he recovers from injuries incurred from his fall. He meets Gwendolyn Darling while recovering and the two become close. As adults, James and Gwendolyn work as crew on ships, but James is always looking for a way to get to Peter. When the opportunity arises, he becomes fixated on his goal which brings many around him into danger.

This is a short story that feels epic because of how far the characters travel and the timeline. The story starts with James is a child and ends when he's in his late 30s.

What a gem!