Wendy and the Lost Boys / Barbara Silkstone

"Wendy and the Lost Boys may be a fairy tale, but I never made the mistake of thinking I should be reading it aloud to my grandkids."

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Humor/Mystery

Approximate word count: 50-55,000 words

Availability
Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: YES Smashwords: NO Paper: NO
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Current (or maybe former) real estate agent Barbara Silkstone lives in Florida. She knows she’s hitting the mark when her writing causes her to laugh out loud, sometimes fooling the neighbors into thinking she’s having a party. Her other books include The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman, her exploration into how men view love, and the “Fractured Fairy Tale” series, which currently consists of three books with another slated for release soon. She also contributed to the anthology Indie Chicks. For more, Silkstone blogs at Barb’s Wire. She is also one of the hostesses of the A Moose Walked into a Bar blog,  which specializes in funny and true stories from the proprietors and their guests, one of which was yours truly.

Description:

This is the second book in Silkstone’s “Fractured Fairy Tales” series.

Wendy Darling, a Miami real estate broker, makes a promise to a dying friend, and finds herself trapped on a super-yacht with its billionaire crook owner and his crew, along with an investigator from the SEC. While Wendy tries to plot her escape, she also investigates the cause of her friend’s suspicious death.

Appraisal:

My memories of the story of Peter Pan are several decades old, so any comparison I make to that story and this one are likely to be inadequate and miss many points of comparison. However, I suspect Silkstone’s goal wasn’t a retelling of the children’s classic, but as a jumping off point for a story of her own, possibly with some of the same lessons to take away. That is just one reason these fairy tales are “fractured.” Some of the characters have names from the fairy tale: Wendy, Charles Hook (not the captain, but the owner of the yacht), and Peter Payne, a high school boyfriend of Wendy’s who doesn’t want to grow up. There is even a dog, named Tinkerbelle.

The plot of Wendy and the Lost Boys is a mystery, with plenty of tension and suspense. This provides the needed conflict to keep the reader involved, but it is the humor that makes Silkstone’s writing unique. In her book The Love Investigator …, her humor made a book that could have easily been depressing into an entertaining read. In Wendy and the Lost Boys, it adds the needed spice to make this more than just another okay mystery. Sometimes the humor comes from being a touch over-the-top. Examples are a problem Hook experiences (which is a good reason for his name to be Hook, since his hands are both intact) and a visit to Hook’s roots, which couldn’t be much different from his current life. Other times the humor comes from an offbeat observation or smartass dialogue.

Wendy and the Lost Boys may be a fairy tale, but I never made the mistake of thinking I should be reading it aloud to my grandkids. A fun read for adults with a sense of humor.

FYI:

Although the description on Amazon makes it clear this book is intended for adult readers, the content contains no language issues that I noted and the little sexual content is mild and subtle rather than explicit.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four stars