"Wendy's Ever After" by Julie Wright

Wendy’s Ever After (July 1, 2025) by Julie Wright.

<This is a standalone novel.>

Now a stunning young woman, Wendy Moira Angela Darling’s mom has marriage on the brain for her eldest child and only daughter since her dad passed away a year ago. Her days are filled with social calls and decadent balls, but her memories take her back to Neverland, Peter Pan and the lost boys. Wearing her frilly, elegant gowns, she thinks of fencing with foil, épée and sabre. With pixie dust, she dreams of soaring again. Instead, she’s stuck at a masquerade ball to appease her mother, but her dance card fills with Mrs. Connolly’s late friend’s son, Liam Blackwell. He’s in His Majesty’s Navy. This stranger is tall, handsome and mysterious. He’s charming yet elusive, and sometimes when he talks, it reminds her of Neverland. She’s already falling for this man, but returning to Neverland complicates matters, for it is not exactly how she remembers. Sure, there’s Pirate Cove and Mermaid Lagoon, even Skull Rock, but something is terribly wrong. Parts of the land are dying, and Neverland doesn’t feel like the happy, bright place of her memories. Now, as she navigates this beloved place, she must figure out if her heart belongs to the boy who’s never grown up or the man who’s somehow unfathomably, infuriatingly, captured her heart.

In 1909 England, Wendy returns to Neverland in this YA fantasy romance. The dynamic between Wendy and Liam is rather like a dance at once carefully executed and off-the-cuff. There is grace, but there’s stepping on toes, too. Their new and very topsy-turvy relationship is dramatic, but the realism of navigating such strong feelings for someone is relatable. I wish there’d been backstory to explain the shadow conjuror’s arrival, because its placement in the story is otherwise filler. Wendy’s inner monologue could also be annoying and had me picturing her as a child instead of the young woman she is. It’s a twisted fairy tale with shadows and darkness set in a familiar place. It’s a casual read, not a deep-thinking one, but still worth reading. It’s Neverland reimagined through a different lens.