Redeems itself by the end (much like Hook himself)

Lisa Jensen’s Alias Hook take a loooong time to get going — she’s quite the fan of flowery writing, and it began to make me crazy after a bit. I had less interest in Hook’s past than his present and future. But once Stella Parrish arrives, things go from barely tolerable to quite interesting and I flew through the last 1/4 of the book, eager to see the ending.

“He has youth and innocence on his side, and the heartlessness that comes with them. I have only heartlessness, and it is never, ever enough.”

Alias Hook retells the story of Peter Pan from a (mostly) sympathetic Captain Hook’s view. A voodoo woman sends Hook (a high born sea captain the mid-1800s) to Neverland as punishment after he spurns her. She makes Hook immortal, and as the foil to an evil little Pan, he watches his men (former Lost Boys) die over and over while he himself gets no relief from Neverland. Then a woman appears one day — not a Wendy, but an adult woman. She dreamed herself into Neverland from 1950s England, and Hook doesn’t know if she’s his savior or his doom.

Jensen does a good job of making Hook’s character someone to cheer for — he’s a bit of an ass, but not the evil villain we’ve all come to know. And Peter is an evil little shit, with tiny baby teeth (that detail gave me the freaking creeps) and a bloodthirst. All things in Neverland serve Pan — or else. And Stella makes for a great heroine — she knows the stories of Neverland, and stands in for the reader while also making brave decisions and kicking a little ass. If the first half of the book had been 30% shorter, this would have been 4 stars for sure!