Title: The First Lost Boy
Series: The Shadows of Neverland Duology
Author: Casey L. Bond
Genre: New Adult Fantasy Romance (Peter Pan Retelling)
Dust Jacket/ Paperback Cover by Melissa Stevens of @TheIllustratedAuthor
Hosted by: Lady Amber’s PR
Blurb:
Stars see everything and forget nothing. And sometimes they meddle far too much.
Ava has no idea who she is or how she got on the unfamiliar island Peter Pan keeps insisting is her home, the place she’s safest. But there are shadows in his cunning eyes and something within her screams out a warning that he can’t be trusted.
When Belle learns that her sister is alive, she leaps at the chance to work with Hook, his crew, and their siren ally to free Ava from Pan’s grasp. She thought that with their help, she’d have time to save Ava before her secret was discovered…
She was wrong.
When the sinister truth slithers its way between the tentative truces formed, some friendships and alliances buckle while others break. But if everyone doesn’t work together to accomplish the seemingly impossible, and fast, all those trapped in Neverland’s gravity will be lost to an insidious darkness forever.
Can Hook and Ava find one another and manage an escape? Or will they be consumed by the malicious shadow and forget one another forever?
Casey Bond lives on a rural farm in West Virginia with her husband and their two beautiful daughters. She writes phoenixes – gloriously flawed and morally gray characters that fiercely rise from the ashes of their circumstances. World building is one of her favorite hobbies, along with stamping metal jewelry, swimming, and enjoying the beauty of nature. She thinks thunderstorms are better than coffee and that watching a meteor shower is the closest thing to magic you might ever see. She’s a firm believer that every amazing book needs a world you want to wrap yourself in, a character you want to win, and a love you would fight for.
Casey is the award-winning author of When Wishes Bleed, Gravebriar, and House of Eclipses.
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Peter beams when we reach a broad tree proudly standing in the middle of another clearing. It’s been stripped of wood from its wide roots to its lowest branch, which is high enough off the ground that I wouldn’t be able to reach it even if he boosted me up. In the smooth, pale grain, names have been carved. There are so many I can’t count them all.
I circle the trunk, reading as many as I can make out. Some are barely visible, having been carved too shallowly. Others have been slashed through. “Whose names are these?”
Peter begins circling the trunk opposite me, but he stays in step with mine so I can only see his face every time he moves forward, losing sight of him again when I move away. My heart beats faster at the look he gives me.
I can’t decipher it, or him, for that matter.
His motives, intentions, and whims still aren’t clear. Like the murky way he answers a question that only displaces the truth’s surface.
“They’re the names of the Lost,” he finally answers.
“Who are the Lost?” I glance at him, waiting for him to explain.
“Everyone who’s called Neverland their home at one time or another has carved their name in the bark.”
There are so many, yet I’ve only seen a handful. Where are all the others? “Why do you call them ‘Lost’?”
“Because that’s what anyone who steps foot on Neverland becomes,” he says cryptically.
“So… I’m Lost?” I ask, pressing a hand to my chest.
He grins and nods. “Of course you are.”
“Should I carve my name here with the others, then?” I tease.
“You already have,” he replies, eyes glittering with mischief.
“Where is it?” I ask. “I don’t see Six.”
“Perhaps you’ll recognize it when you see it.”
His challenge sparks my curiosity and the air between us. I let my thumb trace one of the gouged-out names. “Why are some of the names damaged?”
Peter smiles at the question the way he smiled at the corpse yesterday and I fight to suppress a shudder when he tells me, “We strike through the names of the dead.” He pulls a long blade from his waistband. “I thought you might want to do the honors.”
He lightly drags the tip of the knife around the tree and I follow, stopping when the tip of the blade touches the first of [REDACTED] haunting letters.
