Book Review | Second Star | Alyssa B. Sheinmel

Title: Second Star
Author: Alyssa B. Sheinmel (web | twitter)
Genre: Contemporary YA, retelling
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Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Release date: May 13, 2014
Source: ARC from the Publisher (Thanks FSG!)

A twisty story about love, loss, and lies, this contemporary oceanside adventure is tinged with a touch of dark magic as it follows seventeen-year-old Wendy Darling on a search for her missing surfer brothers. Wendy’s journey leads her to a mysterious hidden cove inhabited by a tribe of young renegade surfers, most of them runaways like her brothers. Wendy is instantly drawn to the cove’s charismatic leader, Pete, but her search also points her toward Pete’s nemesis, the drug-dealing Jas. Enigmatic, dangerous, and handsome, Jas pulls Wendy in even as she’s falling hard for Pete. A radical reinvention of a classic, Second Star is an irresistible summer romance about two young men who have yet to grow up–and the troubled beauty trapped between them.

I am a sucker for retellings of Peter Pan, friends. The Peter Pan Disney movie was one of my favorites when I was growing up, so my interest is always piqued when I hear or see of a retelling out there in the world. So you can imagine my excitement when SECOND STAR by Alyssa B. Sheinmel came around. A contemporary retelling centering around young surfer kids in California? SURELY, I WILL. I enjoyed SECOND STAR enough, friends, but alas I did not love it.

Wendy Darling is a young girl whose family is living in the aftermath of the disappearance of her younger twin brothers, John and Michael. Keen, adventurous surfers, they disappeared a year ago and Wendy is having a hard time dealing with the fact that they are likely dead. She convinces her best friend to cover her back while she journeys up the coast to find them and winds up at a mysterious, deserted beach where she finds a group of runaways led by a guy named Peter. They share some feelings. But things with him aren’t always smooth, and so she winds up also spending time with Jas, Peter’s enemy and the dealer of a really powerful drug. Despite their complicated feelings for each other, Wendy and Jas head out on the road to look for John and Michael. But things in SECOND STAR aren’t like other contemps, so there’s a very atmospheric, dark vibe over all of it.

So I have to say that the thing I probably liked the best about SECOND STAR was that atmosphere. For all that it’s a book about summer and surfing and California, it’s not a light story at all. There’s something slightly off about the cove where Wendy meets Peter and his group of lost boys (complete with a Tink!). Not many other people show up there (at Peter’s house anyway. Jas’ is another story), the house where they live is huge but long deserted, and they fend for themselves by stealing. It almost seems like it exists just outside of reality, which I’m sure was Alyssa B. Sheinmel’s intention, so in that she succeeded. It was the perfect vibe for a story about a young girl who may or may not be in the right mental state to be dealing with emotional stress and the loss of her brothers.

Wendy herself was an interesting character. I won’t say that she’s good because I didn’t love her, but she’s very obviously not convinced that John and Michael are dead, despite some strong evidence to the contrary. She runs off without telling her parents and manages to get her best friend–who is also trying to lovingly convince Wendy that Michael and John were killed in a surfing accident–to cover for her. She has an almost instant connection with Peter that I wasn’t crazy about. She thinks that the beach where Peter and Jas live is a beach that her brothers stopped at and so she wants to dig a little deeper into the two boys and what they might know. Her single-minded pursuit of the truth about her brothers drives Wendy, but it doesn’t always take her to the best places. I felt bad for her for sure: The facts of John and Michael’s disappearance are unclear enough that we can’t be sure Wendy ISN’T right, but she’s the only one who believes what she does about them, so it’s hard to think of her as reliable. That makes SECOND STAR very interesting as well.

I feel like I’m kind of all over the place with this review! Sorry about that , friends! But I also wanted to touch on the two boys, Peter and Jas. They are both really important to SECOND STAR for different reasons, but even though Peter is supposed to be the “good” guy and Jas the “bad” guy on account of being a drug dealer, I found myself liking Jas better. Something about Peter just seemed…off-putting. But Jas was complex and mysterious, and despite his drug dealer-ness, he is the one who stands by Wendy when she needs someone. I liked their relationship much better, even though I can’t say I felt any real feelings about either of them.

What made SECOND STAR not quite as wonderful as I’d hoped it would be was, I think, more structural. This book is quite short–not even 300 pages. And I felt like it suffered for it. It could’ve been 100 pages longer and things would’ve been more fleshed out, relationships would’ve had more time to grow, conflicts would’ve been able to brew and resolve in a more believable time frame, and the end wouldn’t have felt so rushed. (I enjoyed the little twist in the ending, though. It was the perfect way to end this story.)

I wish very much that SECOND STAR had lived up to my expectations, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad I read it. It was certainly a different take on retellings, and the atmosphere Alyssa B. Sheinmel cultivated was excellent. I felt Wendy’s grief at her brothers’ disappearance, and her confusion over her feelings for Peter and Jas. I think it says something good that my biggest complaint (among a few smaller ones as well, but no book is perfect) is that I wish there was more of SECOND STAR to read.