10 books like Peter Pan

I am a complete sucker for a beautiful M/M coming-of-age love story – the more forbidden, the better. With an ominous curse over his head and a downright evil sea goddess for a mother, the great warrior Achilles isn’t exactly destined for happiness. Nor is the exiled prince Patroclus, whose sweet and gentle nature leaves him ever-so-vulnerable to the Powers That Be. Perhaps it’s the fact that these two doomed boys find so much joy in their pure, mutual love that makes their story so achingly haunting. Everyone knows how the story of Achilles ends, but until author Madeline Miller dragged this love story out into the light, very few of us were aware of the gorgeous, doomed love he and Patroclus shared.

My family is Welsh, so imagine my delight when, after years of being an avid fan of the exquisite Studio Ghibli film adaptation, I picked up the book and learned that the dazzling (and dazzlingly vain) wizard Howl was a confirmed Welshman, thick accent and all! 

But the greatest delight of this whimsical story is in its writing. Only Diana Wynne Jones could imagine a world in which turning a young woman into the ninety-year-old version of herself would be a liberating, romantic act. It’s a story told with such wit, heart, and imagination that it’s become one of my staple comfort reads. 

Lila Bard. That’s really all I need to say here. She shares screen time with the other protagonist of this book, Kell, but she is far and away the best character in this series – which is saying something, because VE Schwab is a masterful writer, and all her characters are brilliantly written (especially Kell’s coat, which almost comes a close second to Lila for me). Think swashbuckling, knife-wielding, devil-may-care attitude with a well-hidden soft center, and you’ve got Lila Bard. In addition to great characters, Schwab weaves a fantastic fantasy tale, switching between different universes (multiple Londons!!) with pirates, magic, and some awesome fight scenes. This book (and series!) just got better and better as it went along, and this was in no small part due to Lila Bard’s sheer awesomeness. 

I was introduced to CLAMP’s work through one of their most popular works, Card Captor Sakura when I was seven or eight, but I really grew to love their darker, more surreal projects such as xxxHolic. Not only is the artwork throughout the manga series gorgeous, but the story also introduces you to all sorts of Japanese folklore, explores time loops, and the thin barrier between the human world and spirits. xxxHolic has been at the top of my recommendation list for manga lovers and newbies to the medium for years. Any fan of dramatic twists and turns, the supernatural, and snarky, snappy dialogue will certainly love this series as much as I do.

In this unbelievably gorgeous take on Peter Pan, Lily and Wendy are step-sisters who must now spend a summer apart. But a mysterious boy has been watching from the window and intends to take them away forever to a mysterious land. This book tackles head-on the problematic aspects of the original story and contains a story both thrilling and fun. Family, sisterhood, and magic reign supreme in this hard-to-put-down retelling. 

Having written an evolved installment of the Peter Pan saga myself, I’d be hard-pressed not to have Peter Pan’s first appearance in the literary world not on this list. Often overshadowed by JM Barrie’s second and more popular novel featuring Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy, it was actually in The Little White Bird where Peter first made his boyhood appearance, playing with his imaginary friends in the Kensington Gardens of England. This is a great look at Peter’s early development and documents his early thirst for adventure. The character of Peter was so popular upon the release of this book, in fact, that JM Barrie went on to write his most famous work next. When I read this story, I still have flashbacks of myself as a child, playing in my backyard where my mind would take me on timeless and limitless adventures…  

There is a world of difference between the fairies of folk-lore and the ‘airy-fairy’s’ to use one of Katherine Brigg’s descriptions that infest popular media. Disney’s depiction of Peter Pan & Tinkerbelle as ordinary kids who happen to have wings bears no relation to the fairies of folklore. The moment a fairy character is absorbed into capitalist entertainment, their magic is lost. The unsurpassable fairy lore of Katherine Briggs 1898-1980, takes up an entire shelf on my bookcase and includes The Anatomy of Puck, The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, The Vanishing People, and A Dictionary of Fairies. The one-time president of the English Folklore Society, her books are so authoritative and imaginative, they bring to life the incredible inhabitants of the otherworldly realm. All the best books on the subject were written before 1970, the later ones tending to be cribbed from Briggs and that other great… show more.

Growing up, I was always more intrigued by Captain Hook, the villain of Peter Pan, more so than I was the title character. John Leonard Pielmeier writes an incredible “memoir” from the most famous fictional pirate and uses the beloved characters from the Peter Pan story of our childhoods in a whole new way. The backstory with Smee, the conflict with the infamous crocodile, and all the major things we see in the classic story are told in a whole new way. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend reading in tandem with the original Peter Pan for a fun way to see two sides to a story.

As someone who writes fairy tale retellings where everyone shares one world as we all do now, I always love the tales that my own characters don’t get to interact with. That’s where A Land of Never After comes in. Featuring a pirate queen a strong-willed Wendy, and a trans Peter Pan. I think the diversity different people expand on is what makes humans so magical in the first place.

Starting from an early fascination with graveyards, where I would (and do still) like to sit and chat to the dead, making good friends with some of them, I’ve always been drawn to themes about death. And this book is a really dark, peculiar prequel to Peter Pan where an infant Peter ends up as the unofficial gravedigger for dead babies. It’s also a very beautiful book, but defintely not suitable for young children!