Tiger Lily

Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Publisher: Harper Collins

Release Date: July 3, 2012

Format: ARC

Source: For Review

Goodreads Description:

"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.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Peaches comes a magical and bewitching story of the romance between a fearless heroine and the boy who wouldn't grow up."

***

I love fairy tales, so I wanted to love Tiger Lily. While I did enjoy the novel, the beginning was so slow that it was actually boring. The story is told from Tinker Bell’s perspective, so I expected to be entertained the entire time, but I actually think that this is why I was bored until Peter Pan enters the story.

Tinker Bell is fascinated by Tiger Lily and follows her around everywhere, telling the reader about her actions and providing insights into her thoughts. Even though Tiger Lily is a pretty feisty character, we don’t really feel much of her personality. If we were able to read from her perspective, I think it would have been much more exciting because we probably would have seen a lot more emotion. Despite Tinker Bell’s boring narration, however, she does allow us to see the story from several different perspectives, so we do get a better understanding of Smee, Peter Pan, and Hook by the end of the novel.

Once Peter Pan enters the story, everything picks up and we see a nice romance start to develop. More importantly than the love story, however, it actually gets exciting! We get to meet the Lost Boys, we see why Peter Pan is the way he is, and we start to go on adventures. Peter Pan breathes life into the story that was not there before, and I can’t help but wish he had entered the story sooner! My favorite part of the novel was reading Anderson’s perspective of why certain things happened in the Disney version of Peter Pan that I am familiar with—particularly why Tinker Bell hated Wendy so much!

If you are a die-hard Peter Pan fan, you won’t want to miss out on Tiger Lily. I loved learning more about each of the characters and their motivations, but the slow beginning made it a bit hard to get through the novel. While the story focuses on Tiger Lily, I was much more interested in learning about Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

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