Tiger Lily

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.

I wish goodreads allowed half ratings. I keep trying to decide if I should give this book a 3 star or a 4 star when I really want to settle for in between them, but I can't. I liked this book, it was a lovely read one I would recommend but not one I would re-read. Once was enough but I am happy I read it.

The minute I saw this book I knew that I would love it. Usually, when I see I cover I love I expect it will probably not stand up to my expectations, but this time I knew because it was Peter Pan.

Peter Pan has always secretly been my favorite of Disney movies. And not because of Peter or Wendy, but Tinker Bell & Tiger Lily. I thought Tiger Lily was beautiful in the cartoon movie. I wanted to know her story and I wanted Peter to love only her. I thought Wendy was bossy and silly and didn't deserve Peter. Tinker Bell has just always been my favorite. Feisty and animated. She couldn't talk, but boy did you know how she felt. Since then Tink has had her own series of movies and it's been so fun to see that world from her eyes, but still, the silent Tink holds a place in my heart.

Jodi Lynn Anderson has done an amazing job at making the story of Peter Pan the story of Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell. She's weaved in bits of J.M. Barrie's tale into hers and reminded us of Disney's classic, but there is no humor and this is not a children's tale.

It is dark and dangerous. And it feels real. She took each and every character and made them as real as they could be living on an island almost impossible to reach by ship where hardly anyone grows old. Captain Hook is desperate to catch Peter and in Disney's story I always wondered what would really happen if he did catch him. In Anderson's tale I knew that when he did catch him Peter would die. He isn't a bumbling captain to a ragtag group of pirates, but a madman looking not so much for treasure as much as he just wants to kill. Smee isn't the sweet, reluctant pirate, but a dark and dangerous serial killer.

The tale is told from Tinker Bell's perspective as she has abandoned her own people to live with Tiger Lily whom she loves and admires but doesn't think knows she exists. Able to read human's minds through their feelings she is the perfect storyteller. The story is dark and beautiful and heartbreaking and I loved every word of it.

I was absolutely enchanted with this. Many times adaptions of other stories fall flat for me, but this was just great. The world building was incredible. Neverland is like a pre-colonial North America and completely magical all at the same time.