REVIEW: Alias Hook
What if the reason Hook continued to fight Peter Pan was because he physically could not leave Neverland? What if it wasn’t a bloodlust for Peter, or a revenge streak that was worth the deaths of his men, but instead a spell that trapped him in a neverending hellish circle of “games” with a merciless boy? What if Hook could only free himself from “the Neverland” by giving up that which he held most dear: his pride?
Such is the spell-binding tale spun in Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen.
I love Peter Pan. It is one of my favorite stories. The tale of a boy who doesn’t want to grow up has caught the imagination of many a reader and writer, though it all began with a Scottish playwright and a young family in the early 1900s. The mythology that has grown up around that story, especially in my lifetime—to include Hook, Finding Neverland, and Once Upon a Time—has taken a simple story and stretched it into a mythos encompassing many favorite story archs, though none so enticing as the misunderstood villain. Alias Hook takes yet another look at this timeless crook.
And paints quite the believable and pitiful character.
I was immediately drawn into the story within the first 50 pages, which I try to give all books the chance to prove themselves. I loved the twists and turns the “normal” story took, and the author had me by the nose through to the very end.
Do note, however, that this is not what I would call a “clean” book. Although not graphic, I did feel the use of sexual innuendo and overt sexuality was out of place and forced in a way that made me wonder. It feels like in order to push the book from YA to adult, the author’s publishers told her she needed sex to grab the attention of adult readers. Or perhaps that was the author’s own prerogative.
I do understand on some level that the author was trying to show sex was a sign of “growing up”—including the fact that Peter Pan’s unfamiliarity with kisses is what has kept him a little boy for so long. But was it really necessary to be so overt?
I do strongly recommend this book to any ADULTS looking to open their minds to a new take on a familiar story, just be aware of some of the content.
