No Room in Neverland

by Joyce Chua

All Gemma Young remembers of her childhood are her regular visits to the idyllic, imaginary Neverland before her mother fell sick.

When Gemma meets Cole, a disenchanted boy who stirs up more than just memories of her adventures in Neverland, she begins to piece together her half-forgotten childhood: her mother sick with longing for Neverland, the accident that ripped her family apart, and her father who abandoned her when she was a child.

But now, Gemma’s near-obsessive quest to find her father sends her spiralling deeper into Neverland just like her mother had. As the boundaries blur between the real world and Neverland, Gemma must sift through fact and fiction, discern between truth and make-belief, to find out what happened to her mother and rebuild a new life with her father.

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 21, 2023

About the author

Joyce lives in the perennially sunny island-city of Singapore, where she graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in English.

She is the author of the YA contemporary LAMBS FOR DINNER (Straits Times Press, 2013), Asian historical fantasy series LAND OF SAND AND SONG and KINGDOM OF BLOOD AND GOLD (Penguin Random House SEA, 2021), and YA contemporary romance UNTIL MORNING (Penguin Random House SEA, 2023).

Her short stories can be found at museinpocketpeninhand.wordpress.com and she can be found primarily on Instagram and TikTok as @joycechuawrites.

Reviews

[Bren | Wordwanderlust · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Maybe all the sadness in me had, over the years, coagulated into something unrecognisable, a meanness lurking under the cloud of optimism I had used to keep myself afloat all this time. Because that was what happened when hope died, leaching out day by day—rage became the only thing left to kept me going.”
•••
When I first started reading No Room In Neverland, I was immediately intrigued by the dark retelling premise of the storyline coupled with elements of childhood trauma and coming-of-age struggles. As a young individual struggling to cope with the constant hardships of the real world, Gemma was a character that I deeply resonated with the most. With her parental issues and adamance to escape the real world by venturing deeper into the magical world of Neverland, Gemma proved to be strong-willed and dedicated as she was determined to find her absent father and solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.

There were several aspects of the story where I found myself fighting back tears as Gemma and Cole’s never-ending struggles and difficult relationships with their parents became too real for me. Nevertheless, I appreciated the raw emotions and coming-of-age experiences of the main characters in the storyline, and I thought that the mixture of Neverland with real life perfectly paralleled Gemma’s internal struggles when coping with the real truth, and what she wanted to believe in.

Also, the idea of childhood friends to lovers warms my heart every time, especially when it perfectly matches the storyline. Gemma and Cole’s innate connection that transcended their initial belief in Neverland was vital to how the story played out, and I loved how Joyce weaved their characters together in a way that made their relationship so much more meaningful to the plot.

Overall, there is so much to unpack in the story, but these are the key points that I wanted to share in my review. I sincerely loved No Room In Neverland, and I am so glad that I got to read this (also I want to add that the cover is absolutely GORGEOUS..). I urge everyone to pick up a copy as soon as possible!

[Kayce Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical, enthralling and exquisitely written. Joyce’s delicate yet raw depiction of Gemma’s abandonment issues in her retelling of Peter Pan's tale will tug at your heartstrings, and then some.