Jodi Lynn Anderson

In this stunning reimagining of J. M. Barrie's beloved classic Peter Pan, New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson expertly weaves a gripping tale of love, loss, and adventure. When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan deep in the forbidden woods of Neverland, the two form an unbreakable bond. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. And yet, she is willing to risk everything—her family, her future—to be with him. Then an English girl named Wendy Darling arrives on the island. With dangers tightening around them, Tiger Lily soon finds out how far she is willing to go to keep Peter with her in Neverland…and discovers that the deadliest enemies lurk inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

Tiger Lily

bianca

The lost boys all stood at our wedding. Does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn’t yours and mine? It does to me. And I’m sorry for it, and for a lot, and I also wouldn’t change it. It is so quiet here. Even with all the trains and the streets and the people. It’s nothing like the jungle. The boys have grown. Everything has grown. Do you think you will ever grow? I hope not. I like to think that even if I change and fade away, some other people won’t. 

I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me—of all the particles that will spread everywhere—will float all the way to Neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your Tik Tok loved. 

I like to think that nothing’s final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don’t, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I’ll see you sometime again, even if it’s not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand.

 I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the way things go after all—that all things end happy. Even for you and Tik Tok. And for you and me.

Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? 

It wasn’t that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me. 

I knew I’d miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn’t happen twice. 

And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn’t seem broken at all.

Now there are days when she is content, and days when she’s restless. 

But there is never a day when she doesn’t see Peter everywhere. Things hurt, and don’t hurt, and hurt again.

 Eighty years later, and she can still feel surprised that he’s gone. And then so much of the time, she’s glad. But just as she looks for Tik Tok in everything around her, she looks for Peter in the woods, out gathering, in the lagoon, in the burrow that is now abandoned. She goes up on the cliffs from time to time and stands there for hours, continuing her long good-bye. It’s not for lack of loyalty to her husband. It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart, and left his footprints there.

She said she thought there were different ways of loving someone, and there were some she used to think were the most important, and now she had changed her mind. 

For weeks, I saw it as a tragic turn of events. But when I tried to see him through Tiger Lily’s eyes, I began to see it differently. She laughed with him, more often than she had laughed with Peter. Her heart beat strong and steady around him, as if he gave it strength. I could hear that she loved every piece of his crooked face, without an ounce of fear. 

Some words meant something different to Tiger Lily than they ever had before; some sentences waited years to grow full in her mind. Many people in the village wanted her to be more of a girl, and Peter had wanted her to be large and brave but a little less large and brave than him. But Pine Sap was sure enough to want her to be exactly who she was.

It turned out that my curiosity did not outweigh my courage after all. Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they’re not what you hoped for them.

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.

Peter did not come that night, or the next day, and she stayed awake. She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible. For three days, she kept on studying the horizon, even speaking to it, as if a ship that had already disappeared could hear her. “Choose me.” 

And Peter did choose. But he chose something else.

There was a long moment between them that might have gone differently. Of all the times I saw the two of them together, this is the picture that is most stamped into my soul. 

It’s the two of them, jumbled up and broken apart into confused pieces, and not really understanding, themselves, what they were doing. 

“I won’t wait for you to change your mind,” she finally said, her chin set stubbornly. 

He bit his lip thoughtfully. “I understand.” And to Tiger Lily he suddenly, inexplicably, seemed older than her, and wiser, and the thought hit her hard that it wasn’t fair, because she’d suffered, and there he was, looking like he knew so much more than she ever would.

“Maybe I just love some of you. Maybe not enough.”

 Tiger Lily blinked at him, and she didn’t understand how anyone could only love a part. Her greedy heart didn’t work that way.

Wendy had something Tiger Lily hadn’t even known she was supposed to have. Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter—strong, brave; to be big and to keep up—she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail. For Peter, who feared losing so much, this was a great comfort indeed.

If there was a true moment that Tiger Lily fell so in love with Peter she could never turn back, it was that night, when he shivered and walked and told her he was warm, and told her he loved her so much. 

She was fierce, to be sure, but she had a girl’s heart, after all. As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it. I didn’t know why she seemed so sad and happy at the same time. To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together. She began to plan how she would give him up.

Peter sighed into the water, and his breath sent a small circle of it into tiny ripples. “It seems cowardly, getting old. Don’t you think?” 

She rolled onto her side to look at him, pillowing her ear with her right arm, and letting her fingers dangle in the water beyond her head. “How is it cowardly?” 

Peter kept his eyes on his reflection. “You just curl up around yourself, and sit by the fire, and try to be comfortable. When you get old, you just get smaller inside, and you try not to pay attention to anything but your blankets and your food and your bed.” 

“Being comfortable is not a bad thing.” 

Peter shrugged and turned his head to look at her as if it was a matter of fact. “Of course it is. Old people lock out all the scary, wild things. It’s like they don’t exist.” 

She wanted to say that she would have liked for those things not to exist, either, but she held her tongue, because she didn’t want to sound like a coward.

An unspoken rivalry threaded their relationship, in which Tiger Lily thought that if she could keep up with him, she could hold tighter to him. It didn’t occur to her there was anything in which Peter wanted her to fail. But sometimes I could see that, even for him, she was too fast, too sure-footed, and didn’t seem to need him quite enough.

How can I describe Peter’s face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. 

Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn’t not look even though he was scared.

 And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn’t need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive.

You think you know that someone sees you one way, and barely at all, and then you realize that they see you in another. That was the night I realized Tiger Lily had seen—really seen—me all along.

“I’m not myself,” she offered, guilty. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish. 

He smiled. “You can never say that. You’re just a piece of yourself right now that you don’t like.”

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. 

Rebecca Briesemeister

arwen

Maria

reread it for the second time and it still hurts. (tip: play cardigan dolby atmos stems in the background while you read the last chapter for maximum angst experience 🫶)  

Let me tell you something straight off. 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.

In the forbidden woods of Neverland, Tiger Lily falls under the alluring Peter Pan's spell. She will risk everything - her family, her future - to be with him. But Tiger Lily soon discovers that the most dangerous enemy can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart. From the New York Times bestselling author comes a magical and bewitching story of the romance between a fearless heroine and the boy who wouldn't grow up.

Isabella

tiger lily by jodi lynn anderson is a Perfect book. i don’t remember the last time a book has made me feel this way! and i don’t think that i’ll ever stop thinking about it! i feel like a changed person. good night.

Alexa M

"Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they're not what you hoped for them." 

 2ND READ AUGUST 2022:  

been wanting to reread this and finally found the chance. still so hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet. as i've grown 7 years since i first read this i can now say this book is sad yes but mostly it  is  bittersweet. i cried so much at the end this time too, it never hurts any less. if i were to read this for the first time now, at 25, my rating might've been a little lower but 5 stars for nostalgia's sake. i just can't make myself give this any other rating. LOVE.

 FIRST READ JULY 2015:  
holy crap
**edited: at the time i finished this i couldnt even fathom my thoughts into words but now im ready... i LOVED this book and it has literally been haunting me since i read it. this was SO SAD, some people say bittersweet but i say SAD. i cried so much at the end and ended up loving this book so much more than I ever thought I would. I LOVE Tiger Lily, she is such a real character and i really fucking felt for her throughout this entire novel.. also FUCK Wendy.. 
all in all, this book was hauntingly beautiful and I think it will continue to haunt me for a long long time.
definitely pick this up I recommend to everyone!!!!!!!!!!!! love love love

In this stunning re-imagining of J. M. Barrie's beloved classic Peter Pan, New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson expertly weaves a gripping tale of love, loss, and adventure. Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair… Tiger Lily. When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan deep in the forbidden woods of Neverland, the two form a bond that's impossible to break, but also impossible to hold on to. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. However, when Wendy Darling, a girl who is everything Tiger Lily is not, arrives on the island, Tiger Lily discovers how far she is willing to go to keep Peter with her, and in Neverland. Told from the perspective of tiny, fairy-sized Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily is the breathtaking story of budding romance, letting go and the pains of growing up. Supports the Common Core State Standards

Sofia Nunes

“For the girls with messy hair and thirsty hearts.”

A perfect example of a retelling that adds so much to the original story and characters. First of all, we follow Tinker Bell showing us the story of Tiger Lily before the arrival of Wendy Darling in Neverland. The writing is beyond lovely and the book hides very wise knowledge under criticism of colonialism, sexism, liberty and different kinds of love. I was already pumped because it was a Peter Pan retelling, but then Jodi Lynn Anderson made the story so rich and real that I was at the edge of my seat at the final 50 pages.
Secondly, we can finally imagine things that weren't explained yet, such as the origin of the ticking clock in the crocodile's stomach; how Smee met Hook; why Tink is so angry towards Wendy and, the most precious of all, what was the relation between Tiger Lily and Peter Pan. 
And the ending. It destroyed me. The exact definition of bittersweet.
A brutal first love story and a beautiful tale.


  “Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair.”


  "Did you know I always thought you were braver than me?"

brianna

”it almost felt like he was an extension of her, and like if they had souls, they lay somewhere snug between their two bodies.”


tiger lily has been on my tbr for YEARS now and i finally got the motivation to read it and oh my god.. i absolutely loved it. jodi lynn anderson’s writing style is so gorgeous and captivating. while i believe peter pan belongs to the streets and he SUCKS, his and tiger lily’s love story was heartbreakingly beautiful and i kept gasping at so many of their quotes. i definitely think tiger lily is a new staple in my life and im looking forward to revisiting already

One of the best Y.A retellings I have EVER had the good fortune to come across. I never cared much for retellings, and most of time they fail to meet my expectations. Very enchanting, magical, captivating, and my favorite element, heart breaking,  Tiger Lily is a book to remember.

I have always been a huge fan of the J.M Barrie's works as a kid, and I loved to watch the animated and non animated films as a child. I especially loved the Jeremy Sumpter - Rachel Hurd Wood combo, along with most of the girls my age at that time. I never gave any thought to Tiger Lily, although I did remember her from the movie (see here). I've always been a huge follower of Wendy. Until now.

This book was like being reunited with old familiar friends, except now you've all grown older and so you start to see them in a different light than before. Neverland is portrayed as an adult would see it, not just an escape from reality but an altogether different reality on it's own, filled with it's own darkness and secrets.

The same can be said about the characters. Tiger Lily was entirely new to me, yet I loved her nonetheless; her difference, her strength, her temper, her courage to stand out. Even though she doesn't say much, I still felt for her so much, through every word of the book. Peter Pan is portrayed as a boy of sixteen with a wild laugh and a penchant for trouble, but still the Peter I knew and loved as a child. And Tinker Bell, wow, talk about character development. Her loyalty and her love for Tiger Lily grew on me, and I loved her well. 

The ending was the best part. As I got closer and closer to the last few chapters, I knew deep down it was not going to end well. I knew, yet I carried on. And wow, the last chapter. ALL THE FEELS. I sobbed like a baby after I put the book down. The prose was poignant, so poignant, and it moved me so much. I've never been so moved by a book in a long while. 

Bittersweet and beautiful, this book will surely stay with you.

Nicole Hedley

This book....I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The ending, the way everything turns against Tiger Lily, it makes me rethink things. About how if what we call love is really love. If looking beyond the first image is a good thing. And whether fighting for what you love will really make you a winner in the end. My heart yearned for her, and my favourite character of all time, Tinker Bell, was the narrator. Jodi Lynn Anderson wrote another book series I absolutely adored, May Bird Series, and I can say, this book, is my new favourite. It touched me in so many places, made me feel things I didn't know I could feel. What would you do if you had to choose, and then in the end, the choice wasn't your anymore anyway. 
Tik Tok..I cried when they changed him. The tears were small but powerful, because I knew nothing was going to be the same.
It was only a matter of time before Peter left her too. And the fact that Wendy was so oblivious...
I wanted to throw the book many times. 
But, alas, Pine Sap was there threw it all.
And Tiger Lily was happy with what she got.
But I never imagined Peter would leave Neverland.
They say they don't know how Peter ended up on Neverland;
But I only have one assumption.
He was born from the jungles of Neverland.

Annie

Booktubeathon Challenge:
- a book you wanted to read

"Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories". - Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

2/5⭐️ Read #100 this year.

I have some serious thoughts about the book. I was so excited to read a retelling of Peter Pan since I read the origin tale last month. This was a sort of prequel book told in the point of Tinkerbell. It was all about the love affair that Tiger Lily and Peter Pan. A lot of aspects of this story did not aline with facts from the original book therefore a lot did not make sense nor added up. Since the whole story was told from Tinkerbell's perspective we never get the feelings from any of the other characters in the story, mainly Tiger Lily and Peter Pan. This left all the characters flat and undeveloped. The idea behind this novel is a great one, however the execution is unresearched and unemotional.

Phee

ok so. i enjoyed this. a lot. i LOVE peter pan and neverland and wendy and the pirates and it will probably remain one of my favourite tales of all time. but after reading this i just want to say FUCK wendy darling. like fr i have never wanted to read about someone being murdered by a mermaid as much as i did reading this book. 
I'm trying to ignore the ending because it annoyed me so much and there's a lot to be positive about in this book, including the characterisations of peter and the lost boys, the discussion of gender stereotypes and the effects of colonisation, the relationship between tiger lily and tik tok.. there's so much about this book that i adored. But that ending...
I do truly wish this book was told BY tiger lily, as it being told by tink left out so much that could have been important but felt rushed and brushed aside (including some character deaths and exits, and tiger lilys feelings towards peter.) I understand the decision for tink being the story teller, i do, i just wish there was a version of this story told in both tiger lily and peters povs.

Caitlin

An absolutely wonder adaptation of the classic Peter Pan story, from Tiger Lily's point of view. I love that will it talked about the love story between her and Peter Pan, it focused more on her growing in to herself and her independence.

Lincy

Book Frisson

** spoiler alert **
           This book was hard to finish to say the least because it took the longest to read this month. However, I like the messages this book introduces. For example, rape is discussed but ignored as it normally is in our society. Arranged marriage is discussed. True love not working out is doused throughout the book. Suicide and murder are mentioned. ETC.

I think the only two characters who actually had a happy and fulfilling ending were Wendy and Pine Sap and they weren’t even together. Tink obviously lived the life she wanted because she loved Tiger Lily, but even she was torn away from Peter.

This book was just a lot of intensity and a lot of nothing at the same time because it was so hard to get through it, but I gave it 3 stars because of the messages it relays about love and life and loyalty.

#ThanksForComingToMyTEDtalk

Steysha

Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you’ve heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn’t win. In some places, there is something ultimately good about endings. In Neverland, that is not the case.


Oh, this book. I fell in love with it. Definitely one of my favorites. I don’t know how to write this review, how to express my love to this story, because it left me speechless. I don’t remember reading something like that before. It is written in a classical style, it gives a vivid descriptions, so you don’t need to put an effort to imagine the world where the story takes place. Though it’s an interpretation of Peter Pan, I find the characters unique and fresh. The story is told by Tinker Bell, but she is more of observer. This book is about Tiger Lily.

I was admired by this girl who never cried, even when her heart was broken to pieces. By her strength and loyalty. She wasn’t beautiful and she was manly build, but it didn’t matter, because she captured me with her personality. 


  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.


She grew up with a father who was a leader of the tribe. Others were afraid of her, thinking that she was cursed, but they still loved her in their own way. Everything started to change when Tiger Lily decided to save a man from England after the shipwreck. Yes, this Neverland is set in a real world. People there are aging, thought they stop at some moment. Most shocking for me was that Peter and his boys couldn’t fly. 


  We had never seen the lost boys; we didn’t know quite what they were—ghosts or demons or living men. They were the only creatures in the forest we couldn’t find to spy on, but they left evidence of themselves: carcasses of beasts and prey in their wake, and sometimes a pirate skull dangling from a tree. These boys were famous for their violence; they were known to eat wild animals raw with their bared teeth, and to steal girls who wandered alone.


These boys and this Peter are not characters from Barrie’s book. They are lonely, looking for ways to entertain themselves, while living an infinite life. They aren’t searching for troubles with pirates because they understand how dangerous it might be. And they all want someone to take care of them, because they are just a bunch of kids. Peter is their leader, who might be fearless at day and have nightmares at night. He is not selfish, he feels responsible for his friends. But what they all lack is woman’s attention. So when he meets with Tiger Lily, it’s like two magnets are pulled together by the only thing they have in common: loneliness. Tiger Lily, wary at first, soon enough gets attached to these boys and, of course, she falls in love with Peter: so brave and restless outside, but troubled inside, just like her.


  Sometime deep in the night, after keeping her awake with his fitfulness, he woke with a start, and in the near pitch-black he pulled her tight, like they were on the ocean and she was keeping him afloat.


But Tiger Lily is still bound to her tribe. She is supposed to marry a horrible man, but she can’t just leave him and live with the Lost Boys, because there are people she loves, like her father, who is a man, but has a woman spirit. Like her best friend, who is weak and gets beaten by his mother. 
There are also pirates, broken souls that were seeking for eternal youth, but found only their true dark nature. 
And, finally, Wendy, who doesn’t fly to the second star to the right and straight on `til morning, but sails on the ship to Neverland. She’s a perfect girl, but not the one we got used to.
Every character here is a piece of art. They all have a personality that makes you care for each one of them.
And Neverland is still in all its glory, with lagoons full of mermaids and dark jungles teemed with fairies.
I’d call this book a psychological fairytale, told by one of the most loyal creatures you’ve ever read about and describing one of the most heartbreaking romance ever. Read it, you won’t regret it.

Addison Degginger

Erin Russell

I enjoyed this book more than the source material to be honest. There was so much more depth and emotion in this than any other adaption of Peter Pan I’ve ever seen. It may just be me, but it seemed as though Tiger Lily was on the spectrum, though it was hard to pinpoint exactly where. I found that a very interesting take on the character. This book handles some LGBTQ+ themes in a very delicate way, that I think that those wary of that genre might find an undaunting way to be introduced to them. Would recommend.

Samiha Tasnim

I am not to speak to you,
I am to think of you when
I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait,
I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
—Walt Whitman, “To a Stranger”



It’s good in some ways, not to have a language. It makes you see things. You turn your attention, not to babbling about yourself, broadcasting each and every thought to everyone within earshot—as people often do—but to observing. That’s how faeries became so empathic. We’re so attuned to the beating of a heart, the varied thrum of a pulse, the zaps of the synapses of a brain, that we are almost inside others’ minds.



The Englanders divided the endlessness of the world into seconds and minutes and hours, and Tik Tok thought this was wonderful.



The Englanders had the aging disease. As time went on they turned gray, and shrank, and, inexplicably, they died. It wasn’t that Neverlanders didn’t know anything about death, but not as a slow giving in, and certainly not an inevitability.



"But you have to be careful who you meet,” he said, stoking a pipe thoughtfully. “You can’t unmeet them.”



You’re restless. Everything is too small for you, including your own body.



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.



Actually, I never get sad. It’s a waste of time, don’t you think?



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.



From above, the world looks orderly. That is one of the primary benefits of having wings. Being high shapes everything below into peaceful patterns. And even though you know there is chaos below, messiness everywhere, it is reassuring to sometimes think that it all eventually sorts itself out into something that looks elegant.



“I can’t even hear what I’m thinking most of the time,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “My brain’s noisy.”



To not do what you can to protect someone, that’s cowardly.



She imagined souls roaming the tunnels of the clouds.



I am only a faerie. I don’t have grand ideas, or grand dreams, or long for grand freedoms like people do. But I wanted to be part of their dream too, even if I was only a flea riding on their tails. To run and run and never worry—that was what they wanted, and I wanted to go with them.



And she felt defeated. Because she could not leave him. She couldn’t give him up. All of the strength she’d always felt had gone into her arms so that she could hold Peter better. There was no getting it back from him.



As you may have guessed already, Peter had a soul that was always telling itself lies. When he was frightened, his soul told itself, “I’m not frightened.” And when something mattered that he couldn’t control, Peter’s soul told itself, “It doesn’t matter.”



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.

Grace O'Callaghan

*3.5 ⭐️

CW: Bullying, violence, murder, death, sexism, rape (not explicit, if you’re not paying attention you could miss it)

What a lovely little read this was. Definitely nothing that’ll stick with me, but it was enjoyable.

Firstly, I love the narrative choice. We are told the story of Tiger Lily and the Lost Boys through Tinkerbell’s eyes, which is just genius. As she can’t talk she doesn’t really affect the plot, but she can fly and whizz around to different parts of the island so she doesn’t stick with the same person. It was just really clever, also loved Tinkerbell. Her emotions were in the story whilst never taking away from the main character, Tiger Lily.

The portrayal of Peter wasn’t my favourite. I just found him a bit too likeable. I just prefer it when he’s more brutal.

Tiger Lily was my everything. She’s so wild and completely herself, never fitting in the usual mould for girls. Even though she lives in a patriarchal society, she never conforms. 

The plot isn’t a particularly fast one but it was pretty engaging. It’s mostly about daily Island life and Tiger Lily and Peter falling for each other.

I wouldn’t recommend if you don’t like reading about very patriarchal societies.

All in all, a quick read that I enjoyed but won’t be remembering by the end of the year. I’m also quite picky with my Peter Pan retelling and this just didn’t scratch that itch for me.

Olivera Mitić

3,75/5

It's always kinda scary when you have to review a book the community loves which you thought was just okay. And especially with this I feel like it's blasphemy, since Tiger Lily is kinda one of those hidden gem books for everyone.

There are two things that I did which lessened my enjoyment of this. The first one is that I've read the source material earlier that month and it was still very fresh in my mind. The other one is that I haven't read it when I was younger. 

Because of the fact that I'm now very familiar with the original story of Peter Pan, I totally went into this with certain expectations. This mostly relates to the characters, or rather just Peter's character. While this is a retelling, and I do feel like authors have a certain amount of freedom when writing them, the way Jodi Lynn Anderson portrayed Peter was so out of character that I couldn't deal with it. In my opinion, Peter is a very unreliable person, he's very immature and he has trouble focusing on one thing, let alone more. He also always seemed to me as very selfish and as someone who could hardly ever develop feelings as strong as love for another. This might be a bad way of viewing him, but I couldn't really step away from it. Anderson's Peter was very much changed from my idea of him, and while she did stick to some of the characteristic I mentioned, she went a whole other way with the rest. My main problem was (view spoiler)[ that Peter did in fact leave Neverland in this retelling. This was just way too stretched from the original Peter Pan that it really threw me off.  (hide spoiler)] That's more or less the reason why the ending didn't stick with me as much. 

The writing in here was amazing at times and I loved it, but every once in a while it would switch to being over the top and entering the realm of pathos. Especially once we were near the end. 

It's a very character driven story, and it feels dense from time to time, since the author takes great care in making her Neverland seem authentic. Tink and Tik Tok grew on me a lot, but, sadly, I can't necessarily say that for the other characters (yep, I'm looking at Pan again).

The worst thing is that I know I would have LOVED this two years ago and I'm very sad that it fell so flat for me, but there's nothing I can do about it now.

Tiger Lily

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