Review: Everland by Wendy Spinale

Title: Everland

Author: Wendy Spinale 

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Publishing Date: May 10th 2016

Pages: 312

Genre: YA Steampunk/Retelling

Series: Everland #1

Source: ARC 

 

      The only way to grow up is to survive.
London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived the destruction and the outbreak of a deadly virus are children, among them sixteen-year-old Gwen Darling and her younger siblings, Joanna and Mikey. They spend their nights scavenging and their days avoiding the deadly Marauders—the German army led by the cutthroat Captain Hanz Otto Oswald Kretschmer.
Unsure if the virus has spread past England’s borders but desperate to leave, Captain Hook is on the hunt for a cure, which he thinks can be found in one of the surviving children. He and his Marauders stalk the streets snatching children for experimentation. None ever return.
Until one day when they grab Joanna. Gwen will stop at nothing to get her sister back, but as she sets out, she crosses paths with a daredevil named Pete. Pete offers the assistance of his gang of Lost Boys and the fierce sharpshooter Bella, who have all been living in a city hidden underground. But in a place where help has a steep price and every promise is bound by blood, it might cost Gwen more than she bargained for. And are Gwen, Pete, the Lost Boys, and Bella enough to outsmart the ruthless Captain Hook?

This is a very interesting steampunk twist on the original Peter Pan. Set in an alternate World War II tpe setting.

What made me pick this book up?

Steampunk? Peter Pan? Sign me up I'm there. I actually hadn't heard of this book before BEA and one of the fellow bloggers said she already read this copy and let us have it. 

What do I like about the cover? 

I like the steampunk look, it looks like a little tinker bell, and it matches the character in the book. Very well done.

What made me read it?

Steampunk and Peter Pan. I'm really glad that she told us about it, because as soon as she said it's a steampunk Peter Pan book, I was all over it 

What did I like the most?

I love the way that the author took the original characters and put a spin on them. All of the characters are there. It's written amazingly too, I did not want to put this book down. 

Overall I did not want to put this book down, I finished it in two days. It is extremely well written, the characters were written brilliantly, and the story was well done. The only thing that I did not really like was the main character, it was very back and forth with her at the beginning and it was a bit hard to get past. But once I did, I loved it. 

Wendy is a former Disneyland actress and online journalist. She currently lives in the Bay Area with her husband, three sons, and the best four-legged writing partners ever, Odie and Alex. EVERLAND is the first in a three book series with a fairytale cast in a steampunk world.