Unhooked Review (I DON’T SHIP IT (Get it? Punny!)

1/5

Thank you Edelweiss for the review copy, this does’t effect my review at all. I read half of this as an eARC and the other half from the library.

Wow. Uh. Ok. So. Hmm.
This book was very disappointing to me. I’m going to do my best to explain why I didn’t like Unhooked without coming off as rude :O so please bare with me.

NOTE: I am LITERALLY the odd one out when it comes to Unhooked. I looked on goodreads and MAN so many people enjoyed it!

What I Liked

I LOVE fairy tale re-tellings, let’s be real, they are GREAT. What’s even better is when those re-tellings take it a step further. Unhooked (more or less) did that for me. It was a Peter Pan story without really, you know, coping the story entirely. It is a shiny, never been done Peter Pan story!

The descriptions in this book were INCREDIBLY detailed. I mostly loved the description of The Dark Ones (monsters) and The Sisters, which were basically the only non-human bad guys in this entire story… minus the other Fae and there was only one from what I remember.

What I Didn’t Like

My number one complaint about this book, and it fits under all of the below… it was boring. I am SO sorry to say it, but Unhooked was so so so boring to me. The beginning was very slow, and hard to get into… I think I found Unhooked this way mostly because it was overly descriptive. The imagery in this story is very long, it felt too much, kind of like information dumps? So yeah, Unhooked was boring.

Gwen basically falls for both Pan and Rowen instantly, partially because of spoilers but you know… Insta-love. The romance in this book didn’t feel real mostly because of the whole insta-love thing. The moment she saw Rowen she was blown away, head over heels in love 😛 maybe that is an exaggeration since he was kind of a jerk (but not!) in the beginning but STILL. Then BOOM, Pan comes in and she is once again BLOWN AWAY. The love was not even shippable. I didn’t even like Pan OR Rowan one bit! Which brings me to my next point.

Pan and Hook (Rowan but I keep calling him Hook. Thank you OUAT) felt like the same person. They had the same personalities, and honestly… Pan tried to be evil but in my mind failed miserably. He felt evil for the sake of needing a villain and that was it. Then there was the whole ending (spoilers but not?) with the Queen and she comes in and just messes everything up. SHE FELT CONVENIENT 100%. Which brings me too…

THE WHOLE ENTIRE LOT WAS CONVENIENT! I know that sounds bad but it was. The monsters mentioned in the book’s inside cover came in very infrequently and they weren’t even bad, they didn’t even REALLY harm anyone. They weren’t freaky at all which was sad. I was expecting a dark Peter Pan story but instead got fake romance (sorry if that sounds rude but I am so disappointed). Why was the first person Gwen found in Neverland a good guy? Why was she saved by Hook before The Sisters ate her? Why did Olivia (kind of spoilers but not major) get stuck with Pan and forget everything? Why did Gwen remember? Everything was convenient, even the Queen. Even Gwen, her power, who she really is. Everything…
Another odd thing is Gwen, which sounds awful but bare with me. Gwen knows the story of Peter Pan, she knows about Neverland because of the Disney movie. The thing is, she didn’t realize the obvious things about Neverland that had me face palming. Gwen isn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch, which, again, sounds awful but hear me out. Captain Rowan (Hook) tells her about his past and she LITERALLY thinks, “it never occurred to me that time in Neverland moved differently.” And then someone says that Captain Rowan and Pan used to be friends. And Gwen thinks/says “they aren’t friends?” Which had me thinking WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THROUGH THE WHOLE ENTIER STORY!? Literally since Gwen meet Rowan and Pan, they both talked bad about each other, they fought and killed each others Boys and everything and she says/thinks, “they aren’t friends?” No Gwen, they aren’t… And the above examples are not 100% exact quotes but they are pretty dead on. I just don’t feel like typing them all up.
Nothing happens in Unhooked. Yeah there is some fighting but it’s never intense. Gwen does nothing, she wasn’t the heroine I wanted her to be, instead she kind of sat there and let Hook and Pan led her around. SHE DID do some things but not much more than that.
Another really odd thing is Gwen is the main character BUT I felt like the majority of Unhooked revolved around Pan and Rowan. I can’t explain it, really I can’t but it felt like Gwen was a minor character not the main character. I think I feel this way mostly because she didn’t do much so…

There were a lot of awkward sentences in Unhooked. I had to re-read a few of them sometimes because it just sounded weird! Maybe they were errors that weren’t spotted but an example of the weird sentence structures is… (this isn’t spoilers, it happened early on!) “A group of small boys nearly runs me over.” Quote from page 142. First off, is it just me or doesn’t that sound weird? Wouldn’t it be a group of small boys nearly run me over instead? This wasn’t the only weird sentence, there were a few but not too many. Yet a lot of the sentences were soooo long because of descriptions.

WHERE IS TIGERLILLY :(?

Fable’s Final Thoughts:

I REALLY did not enjoy this book which stinks because PETER PAN and FLYING PIRATE SHIPS. Which reminds me… where are my flying pirate ships at? Anywho, I am the odd one out here because so many others loved Unhooked and I, clearly did not.