TITLE: The Tiger's Curse
Book 1 in The Tiger Saga
AUTHOR: Colleen Houck
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: fantasy, romance
PREMISE: Kelsey gets a job taking care of a tiger who is actually a cursed prince.
MY REVIEW: I think I may have found the worst YA book of the year but the year is still young so I won't go that far quite yet. Now I try to be fair to books that I heavily dislike so I will say this: younger teens in the tween age who love Twilight will adore this book. I also give the author points for doing something other then angels, vampires, werewolves, or faeries. She did at least TRY to think outside the box. Unfortunately she apparently admires Meyer or something because she writes the exact same way (seriously, at one point I wondered if this was Meyer writing under a different name) and it's clear she too thinks research is overrated.
Also apparently overrated is character personality because none of her characters have any. They are two-dimensional cookie cutter characters that of course are beautiful and perfect in every way. Kelsey almost annoys me as much as Bella did but at least she isn't sexist towards her own gender. She's just yet another female lead that swoons over the hot male lead and doesn't really care about much else other then their romance. I really wish this trend would die already. Ren likewise has basically no personality other then "I am alpha male, hear me roar" or "see what a perfect gentlemanly romantic lead I am?".
Then there's the writing. There's info dump after info dump of stuff that really doesn't add much to the story and in some cases is totally inaccurate. Apparently no one told this author that India is evolving and slowly growing out of the caste system or trying too. It's also pretty obvious the author has never been to India in the first place, she's just writing what the average ignorant tourist thinks India is like. Also those prose...ouch. I almost want to take back every thing I've complained about with Meyer's writing. Almost.
Like I said, younger tweens into the Twilight like stuff may get a kick out of this. But to everyone else I say: avoid, avoid, avoid. Also I would like to point out: THIS ISN'T A SAGA. Saga=telling of a hero's journey/obstacles/heroics etc. This and Twilight are not sagas because do any of these characters go around saving the world/people/etc? NO. Greek myths? Saga. Percy Jackson? Could be considered a Saga but Riordan isn't that pretentious. This and Twilight? NOT A SAGA. Please get this through your heads future authors of America. Okay, mini rant over.
WHO SHOULD READY: possibly younger tweens into Twilight
MY RATING: One and a half out of Five tigers
When I saw that you gave this book 1 star on either Shelfari or Goodreads, I couldn't wait to read why you gave it that. After reading your review this is something I took are going to stay away from because Twilight annoyed me too.
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