Braswell explores the scenario of ”What if Wendy first traveled to Neverland with Captain Hook?” which is a great twist indeed.

Here Wendy, John and Michael never went on their grand adventure to Neverland after Nana catches Pan’s shadow. Rather Nana caught Pan’s shadow but he has never appeared to them. Now years later, Wendy Darling is a dreamy sixteen year old who talks too much of childish things and is a dear “little mum” to her brothers who have given up and forgotten about Peter Pan.

Wendy hasn’t. She still looks at his shadow, knowing that he‘s there and it gives her hope that someday she can go to Neverland. An exciting prospect for a young girl whose prospects in life are unmarried spinster or unmarried kooky spinster that takes care of her brother’s children. Yeah, the options aren’t thrilling. She needs to escape especially after her parents find her notebook of Neverland stories and determine she must be sent to Ireland as a way of making her grow up.

Forced to desperate measure she calls for Captain Hook offering to trade Peter‘s shadow for a passage to Neverland. She regrets her decision immediately because Hook is a dastardly villain of the maniacal sort but she’s in Neverland. Now she can meet her hero and right her wrongs!

I enjoyed the fantastical beginning with a mission and a goal that allows for a suspenseful ticking clock for Wendy to race again. But she’s not alone.

Tinkerbell is her companion in helping to rescue Peter‘s shadow for he is weak without it. Not that, it’s easy going. Tinkerbell hates Wendy for how Peter moons over her storytelling while Wendy desperately wants the tiny fairy to be her friend. It fixes the common complaint of setting the two females against each other for the sake of a guy. A point which Wendy explicitly points out as ridiculous. Peter brought them together but surely they can have a whole conversation that isn’t about him. It’s that first realization that leads to a slow begrudging respect and eventual friendship as Braswell illustrates their similarities, being outcasts among London and fairy society.

But on the topic of female friendship, I do wish they included Tiger Lily in their group. I understand that Disney’s depiction of Native Americans is very racist, but in fixing Tinkerbell and Wendy’s girl on girl hate, I feel like Braswell could manage to respectfully depict the Native Americans and add some more depth to Tiger Lily as she had done for the other characters.

Speaking of other characters, Braswell also includes a wonderful supporting cast with the Lost Boys. I particularly liked Slightly and his minor conflict with Peter and the secret of Skipper.

On the villain side, Hook and his pirate crew are much more dangerous than Wendy had imagined in her stories. For Hook is still a bloodthirsty soul who believes himself a gentleman, remorselessly shooting a man from his crew while espousing how he is a gentleman all at the same time. He is also childish and petulant, most of the pirate crew are as Hook demands Wendy to be their “mom” while she’s on board and they treat her accordingly. Though there is one semi-sane pirate, Zane, of whom I enjoyed his calm, honest demeanor and his clear eyed view of his insane boss. And I do mean insane just read his interactions with Smee and you’ll see. There’s a great twist there.

Plus the characters literally reference Freudian and Jungian theories to why Hook is so obsessed with Peter Pan which Hook hates and it’s hilarious. As I quote Hook, “We’re all followers of Jung here!”

Additionally, Braswell had great insights to the wonder and giddiness that comes with imaginative children but also to how brutal they can be, how petty, how arrogant and in the moment they are. Even her hero Peter when takes the rose-colored glasses away and see him as the baby-faced pixie boy he is. This bolsters Wendy’s development as she begins to realize she doesn’t quite enjoy this constant childishness even though she’s not quite ready to be adult at once.

During her adventures across Neverland, Wendy also realizes that there is a danger to dreaming all the time, that she ignores the world she lives in. A world that she lives in privilege, mundane as that existence may be. But it doesn’t have to be for there are others like the poor, like the minorities, who also dream of Neverland and their Neverlands aren’t full of adventure but of warm food and clothing. Braswell’s stories seem to have reoccurring pattern of critiquing the real world which I enjoyed in how it helped bridge Wendy’s growth and a solution to her problem in the real world.

However, this book has a few problems when it comes to the narrator. It seems to switch back and forth between an omnipotent fourth wall narrator that comments on storybook tropes and such, and Wendy. While it makes sense when Wendy does it in her own narration as she is a storyteller, it feels jarring when the fourth wall is actually broken to talk about story tropes of greek myths and intellectual theories when it has not been mentioned in the narrative that Wendy even reads such things so it makes no sense that she’d reference them. Plus it literally acknowledges itself as a fourth wall break. There was also one chapter that was a paragraph from Nana’s point of view which was cute I suppose but literally added nothing compared to the one that came from Michael and John after they find their sister missing.

Tangentially-related to my non-consistent narrator nitpick, there were some very intellectual and unique words in the book. While I’m all for having some unique turns of description instead of the generic, sometimes it felt like the narrator was trying to show off their knowledge of fancy words. It did not feel organic or fitting with Wendy’s narration as Wendy was stated to be stuck in children’s stories and Neverland and hasn’t read many intellectual books where such words would be found.

Furthermore, this may be because I had read this after Braswell’s Unbirthday but Straight On Till Morning sported more than a few similarities what with Wendy and Alice trying to remain prim and proper girls in these mad lands, how dreamy and unlike the rest of society they are etc. This also added to the feeling of it being off-kilter as the creatures described, and the riddles that some people talked in reminded me more of Wonderland than Neverland. I wished Neverland was more distinguished from Wonderland. The latter is supposed to be nonsensical while Neverland more childlike.

I give this a 3 second stars to the right.

Not that it is bad in anyway, it’s a solid adventure story with a thorough journey through all the landmarks of Neverland and its characters, I just felt the inconsistent narrator and the similar beats to Unbirthday (which covered a similar lesson for Alice about xenophobia and underprivileged people and accomplished it very well) did not earn high enough marks to be a four or five for me.