He promised they’d never grow up.
He never said they would survive.
The Story
Neverland is dying.
A thousand-year war between the Fae Courts has left the land fractured.
A blight spreads.
Shadows rise.
Lost Boys vanish without a trace.
Tinker Bell, running from a past she dares not name, now hides behind silence and secrets. But when the Darling children arrive in Neverland and a long-buried prophecy awakens, she’s dragged into a war she thought she’d escaped.
Pan has crowned himself king. The Lost Boys, stripped of all memory of who they once were, are malleable to his will. When his shadow severs and he learns to bend it to his command, he holds them utterly in thrall.
Those who resist risk a fate worse than death:
the Unmaking.
Marked by his shadow, the Unmade lose themselves piece by piece, until only a wraith remains. In the wake of each Unmaking, the blight poisons more of Neverland.
A pirate captain fights the darkness within, a struggle against ruin that never rests. Captain Hook alone sees Pan for what he is, and he has vowed to destroy him.
Damn the consequences.
Tinker Bell, once Pan’s hidden blade, will learn the shadows she once served can be wielded against him, and that truth cuts deeper than steel.
For in Neverland, truth is treason.
Memories are currency.
And remembering kills.
The true war for Neverland has begun,
and no soul will escape the reckoning.
This isn’t the Neverland you remember.
This is the one they tried to forget.
A dark, lyrical reimagining of a classic tale where memory is a weapon, magic runs wild, and the boy who refuses to grow up is the one you should fear most.
For fans of classic literature, Leigh Bardugo, Holly Black, and the tragic elegance of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
The novel is an exploration of Jungian psychology principles such as the shadow self and the unconscious mind expressed through the metaphor of Pan’s severed shadow, the chilling nature of the Lost Boys and their lack of memory, and the wild, ever-changing landscape of Neverland itself.
It delves into themes of the shadow and the self, the corruption of innocence, memory and identity, power dynamics, and moral ambiguity.
TROPES:
LOVE AS DEFIANCE (FORBIDDEN ROMANCE)
SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
FORCED PROXIMITY
THE RELUCTANT HEROINE (AND HERO)
LOST MEMORIES
THE DOUBLE AGENT
FREED FAMILY (FOUND FAMILY TWIST)
DEALS AT THE CROSSROADS
THE ULTIMATE EVIL