Review: Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

7514925Tiger Lily
By: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: July 3, 2012
Genre: YA Fantasy
Rating:
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Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair. . . .

Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn’t believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Peter is unlike anyone she’s ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland’s inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything—her family, her future—to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she’s always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it’s the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who’s everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

 

1thoughtsThis is a great retelling of Peter Pan. Well, actually it’s not really Peter’s story. Tiger Lily is the main focus in the story. Tinker Bell is a faerie who has taken an interest in Tiger Lily’s life. Tiger Lily is unlike any of the other females from her tribe. It’s also known that Tiger Lily has cursed people who have crossed her. Leaving everyone wearing around Tiger Lily. The story is told in Tinker Bell’s point of view as she recounts her observations.

I will be honest that it took a little bit for me to get used to the narration. It’s in first person (Tink) but she focuses so much on the other characters that it’s almost like third person as well. It was very interesting and I have to give the author major props for pulling it off. After I got used to I could just imagine everything playing out.

I liked that the author showed a different side to Peter and even Wendy (who makes an appearance in the book). The only thing I have to go off of is Disney’s version of Peter Pan. So this was a very interesting retelling of a classic. The author added in so much that the only things that seemed the same in the story were the names. She really did a great job in taking a classic story and making it her own.

One thing I have to take a step back and applaud is how gritty the story was. For a YA the author touched on some interesting things. I don’t want to go into too much detail but there’s arranged marriages, village rapes, jealousy that causes malicious acts, and suicide. She doesn’t go into detail over the situations but she definitely eludes to these things happening. There were times that I was reading and my heart just felt like it stopped beating because things were so intense. I stayed up way later than I should have for a work night just so that I could finish it. And there is where my major complaint is… the end. It literally ends and goes into the acknowledgements. I seriously checked the pages to see if my library copy was missing one but nope. Maybe I need to watch Peter Pan again and the missing link will be there and everyone who’s a Pan fan will be like, “Oooooh, she’s so clever to incorporate that in her story.”, but I’m just thoroughly lost.

 

1favequote“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we’re only what we’ve done and what we are going to do.”

kRISTIN

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