It Came from Neverland - Cynthia Pelayo - ★★

AUTHOR: Cynthia Pelayo

GENRE: Historical Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: June 9, 2026

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical fantasy-horror combining ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘IT’. Lyrical writing and vivid imagery. Extremely slow-paced in the first half. Repetitive. Confusing shifts in timeline. More about atmosphere than about gore. The final quarter is the strongest. Recommended to those who don’t seek instant gratification. The official blurb is inaccurate.

Plot Preview:

1914. Twelve years after the incident that changed her life and her family forever, Wendy Darling works as a school teacher and also volunteers with a local hospital, reading to soldiers who have returned broken from the Western Front. One patient in particular is her regular subject; he is unable to wake up from his sleep despite all the care. One day, when he utters the name ‘Peter Pan’ in his sleep, Wendy is taken aback, recollecting the dark days from the past when multiple children went missing from Kensington Park and later found murdered. She knows that the entity called Peter Pan was to be blamed, but no one took her or her brothers, the only trio to return alive, seriously. When one of her present-day students disappears in the same manner, Wendy knows it is up to the Darling siblings to set right the mistake of the past so that no more innocent children lose their lives.

The story comes to us in Wendy’s first-person perspective.

This book is supposed to be a creative combination of J.M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’ and Stephen King’s ‘IT’. I haven’t read IT, so I cannot offer any comments in that regard. But as a Peter Pan retelling, this novel has a fantastic idea but average execution.

Bookish Yays:

👻 The retelling angle. As someone who has never understood why Peter Pan is a beloved character, I appreciate the direction taken by this story. This Peter Pan is very original.

👻 The DARKness of this retelling. Gruesome without being gory, it offers some really sinister chills.

👻 The final confrontation. Quite satisfying.

Bookish Okays:

🐦 Wendy as a character is fairly convincing as someone dealing with PTSD. But Wendy as a narrator is mostly introspective and not linear in her thoughts. Her narration doesn’t help us stay focussed.

🐦 The writing. Lyrical and beautiful. But somehow a misfit for this genre, at least for me. I don’t read horror for literary flourishes.

🐦 The atmosphere. The imagery is truly vivid with all its black birds and shadows, but as the first half is more atmosphere than action, it tests the patience many times.

🐦 The ending. Good but perhaps a bit too anticlimactic in its happiness. The forced potential relationship didn’t win any stars from me.

Bookish Nays:

🏴‍☠️ The blurb is inaccurate. The last para doesn’t happen in the book at all! 🤔

🏴‍☠️ The character development of every character except Wendy. So utterly flat! Her brothers John and Michael get one chapter in their first-person POV, but this brief glimpse into their thoughts barely helps us know them. I didn’t get why they had only a single chapter each.

🏴‍☠️ The pacing is extremely slow. About three-quarters of the book is more like a build-up, with the same ideas being repeated again and again. The final quarter is better in terms of action, but some reveals are quite convenient.

🏴‍☠️ The plot structure – the weakest point of the book. There are random flashbacks within chapters, and also random changes of location. With no time indicators at all, it gets very confusing to figure out if a scene is happening at present or in the past or merely in Wendy’s imagination. (Note to audiobook fans: This book might be utterly perplexing to understand through the ears alone!)

🏴‍☠️ Peter’s backstory. So convoluted! And with so many logical gaps!

Bookish Doubts:

🏴‍☠️ What happens to that character whose name begins from S? He seems to have been forgotten quite conveniently, which is quite strange as he was among the creepiest characters in the book.

Overall, while the book offers some truly spooky chills, the haphazard structuring, the overly lyrical writing, the repetitiveness of the first 75% or so, and the lacklustre character development doesn’t make it an enjoyable read. The concept had tremendous potential, but the implementation needed some strict editing. There are some genuinely fascinating horror elements herein, so I am very disappointed that the writing couldn’t deliver as promised.

That said, there are readers who enjoy atmosphere more than action, and who are far more patient with an extensive build-up. They might enjoy this book more. Mine is somewhat an outlier opinion, so do read other reviews before you take a call on this work.

Recommended to horror-fantasy readers with far more patience for slowness, repetition, and lyrical writing than I have.

My thanks to Crooked Lane Books for providing the DRC of “It Came from Neverland” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.