I am dazzled by this kinky genderqueer retelling of Peter Pan. Pan is the leader of a crew of bois who promise to be true to him and swear never to grow up. Wendi is a grrrl he brings home to be their Mommy, but things get funky when Wendi's fantasy requires Pan to be a daddy. Hook has a rival gang of battlers, and his guiding principle is honor. His greatest enemy is the Crocodile--heroin. These kids who won't grow up are living in a complex world, and every one of them is deeply flawed. That's the thing that most impresses me about Lowrey's reworking of the children's story--how complex everyone is. Even the Darlings, Wendi and John Michael's foster parents are complex. They provide a home for the grrrls, but they're also bigtime on-the-take from the child welfare system.
John Michael is Wendi's sister, and she's entrenched in activist rhetoric and workshops about safer spaces and consent and radical culture. I can't tell if Lowrey is mocking that--and Hook's popularity at kinky sex conferences for his superior rigging skills--or just further illustrating the world these alterna-kids lives in. Pan, despite the youthful magic he imbues in his D/s cultish community, is aging. He's got gray in his red hair, and he is moody and fallible.
Narrator Tootles references the real world where people save for top surgery, apply to colleges, and again, present at workshops. He is a graceful storyteller, dropping hints at what is to happen, in case readers aren't already deeply familiar with J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan tale. Some bois use he pronouns and others she. No theys that I noticed. There's also a contingent of Mermaids--queer sex working grrrls who live near Neverland on a houseboat called the Lagoon. And Tink is a pigeon.
We have it in our LGBGQ YA collection, but I'm not sure if it's meant for a YA audience or not. More like new adult, maybe?