Review - Hook: Dead to Rights (DNF)

Hook: Dead to Rights (Captain Hook and the Pirates of Neverland #1)
by Melissa Snark
Date: 2018
Publisher: Nordic Lights Press
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 230
Format: e-book
Source: Kobo

Neverland is a wondrous isle of adventure.

Neverland is a cruel lie.

Children follow Peter Pan believing their dreams will come true—to never grow up.

Surprise, surprise... they never will. The children Peter Pan abducts are murdered or meet a grimmer fate.

I'm the child who escaped Peter's treachery. I've made it my life's calling to rescue the Lost Boys, even those who don't wish to be saved. Now Pan has a schooner he's using to steal even more children. I'm the only one who can stop him.

Call me Hook. I am the master and commander of a pirate ship, and I'll have my revenge on Peter Pan if it's the last thing I do.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

DNF @ 31%

I think I've been more than fair in giving this one a shot. At almost 1/3 of the way through, exciting things have only just started to happen. Six chapters before that were taken up with introducing characters on the pirate ship Revenge and annoying me with the overly modern narration. (Correction: The author tries to make the writing sound old-timey but doesn't always succeed. It often comes across as a teenage girl participating in Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

For such a short book, I expected things to move along much faster. But the story is so slow. And I'm finding it difficult to care about what happens.

Also, if you're going to gender-swap characters from the Edwardian era, don't name them things like Jayden. If I'm being honest, that pretty much clinched this book as a DNF for me. The author could've gone with Jane Hook. Even Jamesina Hook would've been more realistic. Jayden Hook? Give me a break; last I checked, the infamous Captain Hook was not part of Generation Z.