Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn AndersonPublisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: July 3, 2012
"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."
First off, the fact that Tinker Bell is narrating the story is brilliant. Not only is she such an underrated character in the original Peter Pan, but the author also uses her to tell the story. Tinker Bell is able to read and feel the thoughts of humans, so throughout the book I kept on forgetting that it was her telling the story. Sometimes it's frustrating to see Tink try so hard to get noticed by Tiger Lily or Peter, that it destroys me a little inside.
All the characters completely blew my mind, well mostly Tiger Lily and Peter Pan. Peter was described as a vicious boy, rather than the adventurous one I grew up on. And he didn't even fly! I think flying was replaced with some sort of wire contraptions that I didn't exactly read too deeply into. But anyways, the author depicted Neverland as a place with mermaids and fairies, but it also was just an island out on the ocean.
Throughout the story, Tiger Lily experienced so many hardships and obstacles and I really couldn't handle it. I almost threw the book across the room because enough is ENOUGH, this poor girl doesn't deserve all this! The more I read, the more I pitied her, which isn't surprising because Tink is the observer and the narrator and what she felt was what I felt.
Overall, this book is a tearbreaker. You learn to love the strong and fierce Tiger Lily, and then you watch her world crumble. And because of this, I will never see Neverland in the same light again.
BUT DEFINITELY GO READ THIS, especially if you're a fan of Peter Pan.
