Bambbles Rambles

Apparently a ton of people like this book from what I can tell on the Book Page, but I am not one of them. I have given this book my requisite 30 pages plus a bit to see if it is something that will engage and entertain me. Nope.

My Main Problems:

- The Narrator
Tinker Belle is the narrator. That is an awesome concept, but executed quite poorly. She knows way more than she should. There was a few "Tiger Lily thought that.." No, book, Tiger Lily cannot "think" anything unless via dialogue because Tinker Belle is the narrator. I don't buy that because she's a faerie she can know that much. 

- The Execution
There are some pretty glaring grammatical errors, the ones standing out the most are the run-on minivans. Example from page 5: 

"The girls followed the boys through the forest, and I grabbed a tassel of Tiger Lily's tunic because I, too, was curious, and she ran faster than I wanted to fly. And then we cleared the last of the trees leading to the cliffs, and the way to the sea was open, and I heard a noise escape Tiger Lily's lips, a little cry, and heard it on the other girls' lips too as they arrived behind her."

What? I tried to read that aloud and really tripped myself up. If the story picked up its pace and centered itself a little, I may have been able to over look these, but unfortunately that did not happen. 

What makes me sad is that in the midst of these grammar follies we see glimpses of something that is interesting and good, but it is so bogged down that you can see the forest through the trees. 

- The Divergence from the Mythos
Peter Pan is a pretty well known entity in one form or another and thus people are going to go into this book with a bunch of predisposed dispositions. For example, Peter Pan and Tinker Belle are tight; Neverland is a literal magical place; the Lost Boys are, well, boys. I didn't get far enough to get to the romance, but I am not sure if it wouldn't have just put me off, you know? But I was more mad about Tinker Belle following Tiger Lily. Where is Peter Pan? I know that this is a retelling and that obviously things are going to change, I just didn't like how they were changed. And a radical change from the source material isn't always a bad thing in something that is a beloved story. I thought Cinder by Marissa Meyer and Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen did good jobs reinventing a story while keeping enough of the mythos involved.


I don't know. The three of those things together just turned me off of this book from the get go. I am sure Pan shows up eventually. I just think that this book is going to be something you click with right away or something that turns you off completely. Unfortunately for me, it was the latter.

This was originally posted on GR in August 2012

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