Lady or the Tiger by Heather M. HerrmanMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
1.5 stars
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review
You aren’t going to like me.
Lady or the Tiger was about a young girl surviving in the American wild west and trying to come into her own. Told, mostly, all from her point-of-view with numerous back and forth time jumps, readers travel with her from the beginning at fifteen years old forced to kill a man to nineteen years old and about to be hung as the Seamstress, a serial killer. This was tagged as young adult but I'd go more new adult, there's nothing completely explicit with the sex and violence but with a first husband who is a sadist in the bedroom, I often felt the messaging of don't give up being yourself for men was stylistically written more for adult thinking; I'm a big Judy Blume fan and I couldn't help comparing the two. The “supporting women's wrongs” with claiming fierce feminism when our lead Alice/Belle lures men with her physical wiles to murder them, just wasn't groundbreaking or entertaining for me, your mileage may vary.
For a ghost, he looks very much alive.
Alice gets sent to an asylum after she murders a man and her mother is killed. From there she is forced to marry Reginald, a cop, as a means of escape. She becomes useful to him by helping him cheat while gambling and they travel the west and Europe but he's the sadist in the bedroom and when Alice locks eyes with a boy in Texas, they spend a night together and escape Reginald. Alice then becomes Belle and travels the west and Europe with the carnival of The Damned, falling in love with Cal, the Texas boy, and taming a tiger to dance with. One night things unravel and Belle runs while Cal saves her from a dire situation, but eventually at nineteen Belle turns herself in for the Seamstress murders and wants to be hung because she thinks/knows she's done wrong. Her plan gets ruined when Reginald shows up and says she's crazy, citing the asylum stay, and tries to save her.
And though I have shot two men, kissing a boy here in the fading light, without last night’s irresistible spell to carry me away or my shadow to guide me, feels like the bravest thing I have ever done.
Like I said, the timeline is cut and spliced wildly, Alice/Belle starts off ready to be hung, then you'll go from how she escaped Reginald, her murderous time as the Seamstress, time with Cal, how she married Reginald, and the time at the asylum. There's some unreliable narration going on and an ending that takes a page from the short story it's title is inspired by (The Lady or the Tiger). If you can handle non-linear stories, telling you feminism is simply doing what you want, cool real women historical figures shout-outs, a good message (lost in the story for me most the time) of don't change yourself for love or chance at it, and an open-ended ambiguous ending, then this was something different along those lines.
::scrunches nose:: I don't think so...
ReplyDelete95% seemed to love it on GRs, so š¤·
DeleteI need to stop reading YA with mindset it's for 9ish to 16ish yrs old, the way I've tried to accept contemporary romance is now all about 1st person pov and women's fiction. The genres just seemed written differently, evolving from when I first started reading them.
I've noticed this; there *are* authors still writing in third person, dual point of view--and that includes younger authors--but by no means the majority, or the ones that get the most hype.
DeleteAs for YA, for some reason in my head it's always been 16 to 20, and that's still too young by far in my head, so I tend to avoid them in principle. Even NA, which is supposed to be college age or thereabouts, reads too painfully young for the most part.
Give me people over 25, please!
Your YA ages would make more sense for what I've been reading lately, middle I always thought of as 8ish to 12ish, YA 9ish to 16ish, and NA I usually think of 17ish to 24ish. Maybe my YA ages have just always been way off. This did say 12yrs and up, which when I got to the sadist in the bedroom husband, I was like wut.
DeleteI should clarify, I mean in the publishing market sense, not psychological/physical development sense for those age ranges. Not calling 16 yr olds close to adult out here lol.
DeleteHa! Yes, I got you--and yeah, the "sadistic in the bedroom husband" thing...not saying it doesn't happen to literal children, what with so many states without minimum marrying age, child brides, and so forth, but it feels weird to be putting it out there for kids as young as 12.
DeleteIt's definitely the context and how written, why it made me think of Judy Blume, who has sexual content in her books but feels YA to me.
DeleteI have to thank you for engaging with me on this, your YA ages definitely made me stop and think. I got into a convo with people who read but not as heavy and not engaged online and they gave closer to your ages for YA too. I guess marketing terms aren't as well know or considered as I thought. When I asked what section in library they went to as kids they all said just told librarian what books they wanted, Hardy Boys example, and librarian showed them, didn't really pay attention to section designated signs. As adults in bookstores, just head to like Horror and don't think about age groups. So maybe the marketing term thinking is outdated? But this ties into the romance marketing problem, the people I was talking with definitely don't know the marketing term romance genre with HEA/HFN, saying HEA looks different for everyone and thinking romance=love story. I'm really seeing the crosstalk with these issues now, general thinking and pub marketing.
So thanks! Less stressful food for thought to occasionally dwell on.
Thank YOU!
DeleteAnd yes, we who are online (a lot/often/terminally), tend to think everyone else must be too, yet the reality is that most people rarely are online all that much, or as invested in the things they actually care about, to engage with them online for any significant time.
(and I'll stop there, as I'm sure you can see how this spreads into more stressful areas)