Tiger Lily

Title: Tiger Lily
Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
ISBN: 9780062003256
Pages: 292 pages
Publisher/Date: HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, c2012.
Publication Date: July 3, 2012

Tiger Lily shimmied her wrists. It was the twitching that gave her away.
Peter’s face grew grim and perplexed. He reached for her wrists. It was the wrong thing to do.
For all the time I had watched over Tiger Lily, I still underestimated her. She must have been free for some time, because as he leaned in, she flung all her rage against him with her weight, held him against a tree, her fingers around his neck. Panting, her heart racing, she squeezed until he choked for breath and sank slowly down the tree, half conscious.
She left him dazed and lying in the dirt, and ran.
It wasn’t until the next day that Tiger Lily realized she’d left her necklace behind, hanging around his neck. (56)

Tiger Lily, found and adopted by the shaman when she was just a baby, has never really been accepted by the tribe due to her tomboyish ways. She excels at hunting, running, and swimming, quite often better than the boys. So when she encounters both the despised pirates and the infamous and feared Peter Pan in the same day, any other person would be scared. But Tiger Lily’s demeanor intrigues both of them, and she receives a challenge from Peter to find the Lost Boys hide-out, all the while being watched by the pirates who are hoping she leads them to their sworn enemies. So begins a unique friendship, which might be more except that Tiger Lily is promised to a oafish older man in her own tribe. With the arrival of Englishmen and a blonde-haired girl named Wendy who is everything girly that Tiger Lily is not, her father’s position in the tribe and her alliance with the Lost Boys is challenged. Will the pirate’s persistent fight against the Lost Boys lead to a solution to all of Tiger Lily’s problems, or lead her down a path that no one sees coming?

This is a unique telling of the Peter Pan story from primarily Tinker Bell’s perspective, which seeing as how the book is named after Tiger Lily I did not expect. I found myself enjoying it anyway, and Tinker Bell’s unique perspective and ability to read people’s hearts allowed us to see everyone through an objective (although still opinionated) filtered lens, and get swept away by the story more than the emotional turmoil of one character. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t love what Anderson did with the characters, because she did a great job of making them her own. Stripped of almost every fantastical element, she still brings the mystery and magic of the story we all know to life without changing the major plot points or characters. Granted, I’ve never read the original and have only seen the Disney version, but the more retellings I read the more I want to read the original by J.M. Barrie. We still have the one-handed Hook, still have Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and Tinker Bell. But Smee was a serial murderer before enlisting in Hook’s crew, Wendy arrives by much more conventional means, and Tiger Lily’s adoptive father, Tick-Tock (named after the infamous clock) is a cross dresser, which I did not see coming but adds another layer to this peculiar tale and contrasts nicely against Tiger Lily’s tomboy tendencies. It’s bare-bones, realistic magic more reminiscent of Tuck Everlasting than flying boys and pixie dust.

The setting is also lush and vibrant. At one point Anderson mentions Tiger Lily swimming with someone (I won’t reveal who, because that would spoil it) and describes her holding on to his neck and wrapping her legs around him, and I could visualize it perfectly with just the few words she uses. The hostility between the groups is palatable, and the climax and the conclusion keep readers engaged until the very end. I could picture so much of the story while reading, it was almost like a movie playing in my head, and I couldn’t stop until I finished the story several hours later.

There are so many points of discussion with this book, as Tiger Lily has a few hard decisions to make and she doesn’t always act the way readers expect her to act. In fact, I like this strong, powerful, and fierce warrior version so much more than the meek, tame, Pocahontas like character I expected. I think this is really the key to reading this book, is that you don’t get what you expected. You expect a simple love story, and while it does end happily, it twists and turns in a way that leaves you guessing. Allow this book to pull you in and lead you to where it ends, because you will be satisfied by the journey and the eventual conclusion. Definitely recommended for fantasy fans who enjoy retellings or are tired of the love-triangle angle in fantasy, or older readers who enjoyed Barry and Pearson’s Peter and the Starcatchers series when it first came out.