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A review by stuckinafictionaluniverse
Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
3.0
This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn't win.
3.5
They weren’t joking when they said that this was a tearjerker.
I never really cried, but would like to think that I would’ve, had I been the type who cries because of a novel.
Nonetheless, this book left me utterly destroyed and defenseless.
Tiger Lily is a beautiful, tragic book. It’s easy to see why it’s gotten so much hype; the lovely, delicate prose is magnificent, the characters intriguing and broken.
It’s a quiet and lonely story, told through the eyes of the constant observer; Tinker Bell.
Lyrical writing can always make wonders for a story, but this ended up being somewhere between half-decent and amazing. So here’s my reason for rating it 3 stars: There were moments of brilliance sprinkled here and there throughout this otherwise average book.
The writing - no matter how wonderful it is - cannot make up for the nearly plotless story that struggled to kept me interested.
The pacing is on the slow side, and not much happens.
The characters are all extremely distant and it’s hard to pinpoint their personalities.
This creates a fascinating mystery around them, and yet was to the book’s disadvantage.
As the story goes on and we continue to get zero details, my interest wavered.
Tiger Lily is a seemingly cold character, and it took a while before I warmed up to her mysterious and dreamy personality. Once I did, the disappointment was a fact. We follow her everywhere; in her darkest moments and in her best ones. And yet, I couldn’t fully connect with her or any of the other characters, no matter how charming or intriguing they were.
Just like the narrator Tinker Bell, I was nothing but an observer.
Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too. There was strength, and there was also just the determination to look strong. She guarded herself like a secret.
There’s the word I’m searching for: guarded. No matter how long I thought of these people, they never got to me. The story itself made me very emotional, but indifferent towards most of the characters.
A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.
I would lie if I said this book didn’t affect me emotionally, severely even.
It hits you, every single thing that these poor characters go through makes you want to hug them. Hug these sad personalities who you care about, even if you barely know them.
The atmosphere gives you a sense of helplessness; you all know the story about Peter Pan, don’t you? You see the ending coming, and yet it shocks you.
Tiger Lily is a dark, heartbreaking little book. It is the definition of bittersweet. I won’t tell any secrets, but let’s simply say that the ending is happy and hopeful, and at the same time very tragic.
Final verdict:
I think I loved this book. And severely disliked it at the same time. It deserves more than a trivial three-star rating, for it affected me deeply.
Tiger Lily is not a novel that will make it to my favorites list. It will not even sit on my favorites shelf of this year. Yet, it is a story that will always stay with me, and one I will return to.
Just read it, and maybe then you will understand.
3.5
They weren’t joking when they said that this was a tearjerker.
I never really cried, but would like to think that I would’ve, had I been the type who cries because of a novel.
Nonetheless, this book left me utterly destroyed and defenseless.
Tiger Lily is a beautiful, tragic book. It’s easy to see why it’s gotten so much hype; the lovely, delicate prose is magnificent, the characters intriguing and broken.
It’s a quiet and lonely story, told through the eyes of the constant observer; Tinker Bell.
Lyrical writing can always make wonders for a story, but this ended up being somewhere between half-decent and amazing. So here’s my reason for rating it 3 stars: There were moments of brilliance sprinkled here and there throughout this otherwise average book.
The writing - no matter how wonderful it is - cannot make up for the nearly plotless story that struggled to kept me interested.
The pacing is on the slow side, and not much happens.
The characters are all extremely distant and it’s hard to pinpoint their personalities.
This creates a fascinating mystery around them, and yet was to the book’s disadvantage.
As the story goes on and we continue to get zero details, my interest wavered.
Tiger Lily is a seemingly cold character, and it took a while before I warmed up to her mysterious and dreamy personality. Once I did, the disappointment was a fact. We follow her everywhere; in her darkest moments and in her best ones. And yet, I couldn’t fully connect with her or any of the other characters, no matter how charming or intriguing they were.
Just like the narrator Tinker Bell, I was nothing but an observer.
Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too. There was strength, and there was also just the determination to look strong. She guarded herself like a secret.
There’s the word I’m searching for: guarded. No matter how long I thought of these people, they never got to me. The story itself made me very emotional, but indifferent towards most of the characters.
A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.
I would lie if I said this book didn’t affect me emotionally, severely even.
It hits you, every single thing that these poor characters go through makes you want to hug them. Hug these sad personalities who you care about, even if you barely know them.
The atmosphere gives you a sense of helplessness; you all know the story about Peter Pan, don’t you? You see the ending coming, and yet it shocks you.
Tiger Lily is a dark, heartbreaking little book. It is the definition of bittersweet. I won’t tell any secrets, but let’s simply say that the ending is happy and hopeful, and at the same time very tragic.
Final verdict:
I think I loved this book. And severely disliked it at the same time. It deserves more than a trivial three-star rating, for it affected me deeply.
Tiger Lily is not a novel that will make it to my favorites list. It will not even sit on my favorites shelf of this year. Yet, it is a story that will always stay with me, and one I will return to.
Just read it, and maybe then you will understand.