OMG this is the most devastating Peter Pan retelling.  I am just shook.
This is so beautiful, so emotional, so heartbreaking.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

most whimsical corruption arc i've ever read

Far out that was bittersweet and painful.
When’s the next heart-wrenching retelling? I need it.

I only wish I had read this alone and curled up in my reading chair, so I could openly weep. Instead I had to finish my lunch break and go back to my customer service job as if I hadn't just been utterly torn apart.

Peter Pan has long been a favourite of mine and I'll eat up any retelling that promises to do something interesting with the original tale -- or, in a case such as this, is written by a favourite author. H.G. Parry is a brilliant writer, as she proves again in this novella. As she tells the story of James, a young Captain Hook, she paints a world that dances between grimy and magical with just the right echoes of the original J.M. Barrie story.

Heartless is haunting, charming, frightening, and lovely. It's painful and inevitable in the way a good prequel is. It's a magical and tragical love letter to Peter Pan. Any fan will eat this up, and I highly recommend you do.

I can't wait to read it again. 

There is something distinctly magical about an H. G. Parry book. Maybe it's her prose (exquisite, luminous, fluid) or her scholar's ability to create works that unravel classic English literature (what I wouldn't give to be in one of Parry's literature classes!). Suffice it to say, I've been a huge fan of her works since her debut, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, a riff on Dickens' works that's so deliciously nerdy. I adored A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians and its sequel, and I've had The Magician's Daughter on my TBR for ages.

So, suffice it to say, I was THRILLED to get my hands on an early copy of Heartless, a Peter Pan retelling that asks the question: what if Captain James Hook and Peter Pan were childhood friends?

Functioning as both a quasi-origin story for Barrie's original works and an interrogation of the source material, Heartless has all the classic hallmarks of a Parry book. It's brainy, heartfelt, and witty, and practically tailor-made for those English majors who had to leave English behind for the working world, but never forgot the classroom (hey! Kinda like Nerverland!!). I adored her take on Captain Hook and Wendy (Gwendolyn in her version) Darling. I adored the anti-colonial undertones of Neverland and Parry's rumination on how the act of storytelling fundamentally changes reality. It is a short book, more novella than novel, so I'm going to refrain from saying anymore. 

An absolute must-read -- my only complaint is that it ends so soon! I could've easily spent 200 more pages in the world Parry crafted.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Subterranean Press, and H. G. Parry for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!