2 out of 5 stars
This is my first, but will probably not be
my last, negative review.
After 18 year old Kelsey Hayes takes a job
at a circus (which sounds pretty exciting until you realize that she’s on the cleanup
crew), she feels herself drawn to the mysterious white tiger who lives there,
and he is extremely docile around her. When a man shows up saying that he needs
to take the tiger, Ren, to a preserve in India, Kelsey is devastated. However,
he also offers to bring Kelsey because she handles the tiger so well. Once
Kelsey is in India, she soon realizes that neither Ren nor her job are what
they seem.
Let me just preface this by saying that I
was SO EXCITED to read this. I had heard so many good things about this book
and it has so many good reviews. I was quickly disappointed. At first, I really
liked Kelsey. She seemed cool and quirky and ready for adventure. But then
everything went downhill.
Kelsey revealed herself as a completely boring
and unrealistic character, and the plot had so many holes and was so slow.
Kelsey immediately, and I mean immediately, fell in love with Ren, which
annoyed the heck out of me. She was rude to him and inconsiderate and so
terribly weak. She literally could not do a single thing for herself. The
narration is horrible. It’s in first person, which could have been really
amazing if Kelsey didn’t sound like an idiot. The best way to describe it is
this: the immature awkwardness of a 12 year old writing in her journal
force-fed through a 50 year old woman’s brain. Which brings me to the dialogue:
it was some of the most awkward, stiff dialogue I’ve ever read. All the
characters sounded really similar and it just fell flat.
Another glaring problem was the pacing of
the plot. The author spent so much trying to describe every little unimportant
detail that I kind of wanted to scream. When something exciting did happen, the author
would fly through it in four pages, and then it was back to 15 pages of
information on the texture of Kelsey’s pants, or whatever. It was a struggle to
finish.
This book wasn’t completely terrible. The
ideas and the setting were interesting, but they couldn’t overshadow the cliché,
annoying, boring-ness of it all. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Thanks!
Liv
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