Did I read Never by Jessa Hastings or did Never read me?

"Alexa play Peter by Taylor Swift"

If you like Peter Pan and your favorite song off of The Tortured Poets Department is Peter, then Never by Jessa Hastings is exactly what you need. Hastings takes the story of Peter Pan and puts a little twist on it. She turned Peter Pan into a romance between Peter and the FMC Daphne. Daphne has heard about Peter Pan through her mother and grandmother Wendy. She doesn't believe that Peter is coming for her despite keeping her window open when she turns thirteen and he never shows up. But eventually Peter shows up and takes Daphne off to Neverland and thus their romance begins. Jessa Hastings writes Peter in a way that I think most of us feel as though we have had a Peter Pan in our lives. The childlike boy who came into your life like he was made of magic....but he never quite matures. Peter seems like he's a man stuck in a childlike state from a lack of parental structure as Hastings says, "I do have to remind myself that he was raised by fairies and, in part, the land, and thus he behaves like the weather. It's not often that the weather doesn't dwell in extremes. It's usually hot or cold, sunny or rainy, stormy or brilliant, and he is the same. Whatever Peter is in that specific moment, he is wholly that thing. When he is petulant, my god, he is hateful, but when he is sweet, he is the human embodiment of birds landing on your fingers and deer feeding freely from your bare hands." As well as, "And you can excuse so much because he's never known a parent."

Daphne our lead female character is able to see flaws with Peter. He's oblivious at times, antagonizes her, and doesn't always treat her right. As she puts it, "Peter can be callous and impetuous; he's incredibly temperamental. He's hotheaded, he's arrogant, he's proud-but then there's that boyish charm". In Peter Pan Wendy is able to see a cleverness in Peter Pan that made him a little hard to trust when it says, "Eventually Peter would dive through the air, and catch Michael just before he could strike the sea, and it was lovely the way he did it; but he always waited till the last moment, and you felt it was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of human life. Also he was fond of variety, and the sport that engrossed him one moment would suddenly cease to engage him, so there was always the possibility that the next time you fell he would let you go." Have you ever known a Peter like that? One who preoccupies themselves with all different activities? One moment you find them there to catch you and the next moment something else has become more enjoyable to them. At this point reading Never I asked myself, "Am I reading Never or is Never reading me?

But from his magical personality she desires to be the one he kisses. She's jealous of Calla, the other girl in his life. She becomes bothered by Peter going off spending his time with Calla and the mermaids. But when Daphne gets close to Jamison, a pirate, Peter becomes jealous and angry. He wants Daphne all to himself but wanders off with Calla, and gaslights Daphne when she confronts him. He's infuriating and immature, but adventurous and whimsical. He's the one Daphne heard about and didn't believe in until he came in through her window. But the moment she left with him, it's like she left a part of herself following after something she says is a dream and a nightmare, "He's such a strange boy. All instinct and wild animal, and that is, for the most part, very exciting and almost dreamlike to live alongside. There is, however, a fine line between dreamlike and nightmares." Even when she doesn't like Peter she finds herself under his spell. Isn't that what romance can feel like? Being under a spell you can't break. Daphne considers destiny vs. fate. How destiny is formed by our choices and actions, whereas fate she says is cemented. By the end we see how this plays out, but I won't spoil it.

In Never I felt as though Peter represents someone who seems to magically appear in your life one day whom you leave a part of yourself behind for. You can't help but become sucked into his boyish charm, until you realize he's likely to never grow up. Sadly, a lot of times this is because they know nothing else. They too may not have had parental structure or the love they needed. They are stuck in a cycle of repeating behaviors to get the love they wanted as a child. They avoid adulthood and stay in a place of never settling, instead spending nights floating through the night sky and entering open windows. This is how Taylor seems to explain Peter Pan in her song "Peter". Waiting for someone to figure out their issues, grow from their immaturity, and come back for you. Like when her lyrics say, "You said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me." which I think can be relatable for a lot of people. Whether it's a romantic partner, a parent, or a friend who we've been waiting for to grow and mature, but they seem to be stuck in time. As Taylor goes on to say they are, "Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life" and just like Wendy, we find ourselves being the ones growing up and moving on.

There is a scene in Peter Pan that I think is very relatable and that is when Peter gets hurt when Hook bit him. It says, "It was then that Hook bit him. Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he come to you is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest". We have all been there, getting hurt for the first time. The first time something in life is not fair and may even cause you to question why something so unfair would be aloud to happen, especially as a young child. We seek love and will continue to love even after someone has hurt us, but we've been changed by that moment. Unlike Peter, we may suppress memories in order to survive, but we don't have it completely erased from our mind. There will always be a memory stuffed away somewhere that shapes how we love, who we choose to love, and may be what causes us to grow up too fast. Peter on the other hand does not remember, which is part of what makes him the way he is.

Peter Pan is a made up tale, but is Peter really fictitious or have most of us, if not all of us, encountered our own Peter Pan? No matter how Peter is portrayed or interpreted I think we can all find something relatable in the tale. Whether you connect with Peter, Wendy or have a different take on it. I think that's exactly what Hastings did here. She took a story we love and turned it from a childhood tale to an adult romance while still keeping the essence of Peter Pan. If Peter Pan from Never with his memory loss and easy to get bored personality came into your life what would it be like? How would you feel if you fell in love with Peter and he went off on adventures and forgot about them when you asked? Would you leave a part of yourself behind for a boy who will never grow up? Isn't that what we do sometimes already? We self abandon in order to be loved by those who show up at our window. We kept our windows open until we grew up and moved on from fairytales.