Reviews with content warning for Incest - The Night Tiger (Library Edition)

Reviews tagging 'Incest'

The Night Tiger (Library Edition) by Yangsze Choo

39 reviews

kikicochrane's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The Night Tiger was a pleasant and quick read for me, I enjoyed the overall story telling and setting of the novel. It felt like I was watching each character in their part and the pacing was nice.

Spoiler content below, includes end of book mentions.

While I agree with the other reviewers about being taken aback by the sibling romanticism and sexualization, by the end of the novel I came to understand that out of the main five characters, each had a pair. Ji Lin & Shin being step siblings but born on the same day, Ren & Yi being twins, Dr. William Acton & Lydia bearing the same Confucius virtue name. There were multiple warnings in the book that described that they each had something negative to watch out for within one another. Shin's possessiveness and indecency are the opposite of the integrity he is supposed to have given his assigned virtue. Ji Lin represents good behavior, her having romantic and jealous thoughts about her step-brother are opposite characteristics to that virtue. Knowing that they all had a flaw that could impact one another made me connect the dots to why Choo added this romance in detail. While I don't agree with pursuing a step sibling romantically, I understand why these characters developed those feelings with one another.

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piledriverwaltz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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el13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Writing was excellent. The story unfolded in a really captivating way. It is a bit twisted, mysterious, and dark, with magical realism, reflective of the land of Malay and the sociopolitical environments at the time. But, I think it was a bit too dark for me. It did leave me with a lot of questions still, but I think it did so intentionally, as it was a mystical story. Finally, and most importantly, the love story was NOT IT FOR ME DAWG. It felt so wrong. I definitely felt the way Ji Lin's mother did.

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unsure's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Other than the unusual writing style, specifically the tense, it starts off strong. You're dropped right into the action, but with that comes a lot of flashbacks. You can never be quite sure if something is supposed to be mysterious, or you were just not paying enough attention.

Almost every chapter has a narrator change. Of the 3 narrators, 2 are likeable. They're loyal, hard-working and smart. Li Jin is a girl/young woman stuck in a life where she can only watch others accomplish her dreams but still finds a way to be true to herself and protect her mother. Ren is a young, orphan boy who has a seemingly impossible task while navigating a new place and new people. Watching as their lives interwove was enjoyable. The 3rd narrator is not that good of a person, but he's a good foil for Ji Lin and ren.

The pov change were difficult though. With each switch, the tenses changed. This, along with the flashbacks, made reading a bit irritating. Additionally, the pov changes would sometimes start at the beginning of middle of the last pov, meaning you had to backtrack, which was especially frustrating when it was right in the middle of a tense scene and the characters were with eachother the whole time.

The mystical aspect was both enjoyable and overwhelming. I think it could have benefited from some streamlining. The 5 Confucius values were really cool, and I liked the is -he-isn't-he bit with the weretiger, but I think the concepts were kept too separate that it was difficult to accept that they'd both show up in the same storyline without some connecting factor.

The big problem was the characters' individual endings. The main villian doesn't get their proper comeuppance

William dying instead of Lydia

, and the love interest has a scene where they're professing their love that seems vaguely abusive, in the sense of dangerously possessive and manipulative. It felt like, after all this build up and character backstory and memories of misunderstood interactions, the author ran out of time to explain the emotional state of this character, which led them to seeming rather immoral

shin continually pressuring ji to have sex so she'll have to be "his," which, considering his father/her step father's abusiveness and attitude towards the family (objects to show off as the perfect family), seems out of character for him to feel and her to accept

.

Honestly the ending just disappointed and rather infuriated me. Massive spoiler-filled rant about the William-Ren storyline starts here

wtf the Lydia William Li twist came out of no where; she's already admitted to multiple murders, the name matching bit was just the author trying to add more. Additionally, it was getting progressively harder to accept Ren's intelligence with some stuff and utter ignorance with other stuff - like sex and Lydia's evilness. I cannot see how Ren would think tho give William the stuff that Lydia have him while also not really liking Lydia? Especially since Lydia said the medicine was for Ji Lin. If anything, I could see him innocently giving it to her or even Ah Long accidentally. Also the author just skips over the fact that Ren killed William. Like that's never going to be found out or that Ren will never realise, especially since he'll become a doctor himself, which will be traumatising for him, I think.

In summary, it was filled with ups and downs, and I ended up upset that the ending had some really bad bits when most of it had so much potential

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uncleroo's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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tiffanychan's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

As a Malaysian, I wanted to love this book. I really did. But the prose was so bland, the plot so slow and predictable. AND THE INCEST. Why was that included? This book would've been so much better without the romance. And I'd be fine if the male love interest (a stepbrother) was decent, but HE WASN'T.

He was possesive (literally says "You're mine" to his stepsis), manipulative (planned to stay at a hotel so that he could sleep with her, and when she resisted, he says "But you'll regret it if we never [had sex]). AND he told off his sister's admirers so that he could have her for himself.

Why have we allowed such toxic behaviour to become mainstream??

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