Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.78 Stars Content Rating: Light R (for language, violence, and suggestive content) Trigger Warnings: Domestic Abuse, Mental Health The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say. (goodreads.com) Originally, I picked up this book because I wanted to read a book by a Latino or Hispanic author for National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th through October 15th). I found this one listed on one of my local libraries websites and thought it sounded like a good spooky season read also, since there is a ghostly element to it. And then my wonderful coworkers/friends *waves to wonderful coworkers/friends* alerted me to a Hocus Pocus themed read-a-thon going on in October. The read-a-thon, based around the 1993 movie, involves three teams (Sanderson Sisters, Undead, and Trick-or-Treaters) and different prompts for each team. I am on team Sanderson Sisters and one of the reading prompts for this team is to read a book about sisters. So, Tigers, Not Daughters is killing three reading goals with one stone and it turned out to be an excellent book to boot! Though it features an angry ghost, I wouldn’t exactly call this book a horror story. Paranormal maybe, but not really horrifying. So, if you are looking for a book to scare you, then this might not be the one for you. Honestly, the ghost wasn’t in it as much as I thought she would be. This was really more of a family drama kind of story. Which was a little disappointing since I was sort of looking for a good scare, but also a bit of a relief since I can’t actually handle scary stuff very well. I would describe this book as Little Women, but with more swears, more sexual references, lots more violence, and with more hateable male characters. Speaking of the male characters… there seemed to be a running theme of the men in this story being unhelpful, which is actually kind of interesting. Now, I’ve been out of high school for a few years now and haven’t really intensely analyzed any literature since then, but every once in a while I’ll come across a book that I wish I could have read while in a literature class so that we could get into the nitty gritty details and the literary devices and such. This was a book like that for me. I want to talk to someone about the continuing theme of unhelpful men. Even the nice boy character wasn’t much help. Throughout the story you see instances of the sisters turning to these men and boys for help or the boys/men trying to help unsolicited and when they get involved things almost always get worse or, at least, they don’t get any better. I loved going from being annoyed with the boy characters because of their tendency to make things go south (even when they meant well) to cheering for the girls when they do things on their own. I was also interested in the motif of laughter. (I’m eighty percent sure I used the word “motif” correctly, but like I said, it’s been a long while since high school so bear with me.) I mean, there was even a freaking hyena that showed up throughout the story. Sometimes when spookish happenings were about to occur the sisters could hear the ghost’s laughter. There was one point where two characters got into a fight and one of the sisters couldn’t stop laughing even though it wasn’t funny. There was a point when something horrible and embarrassing happened to another sister at school and everyone, including some unhelpful boys, laughed even though some of them felt bad for her. I no longer possess the skills to pick apart what that could mean, and I’m glad I don’t have to write a paper about it, but I found it really interesting. Okay, that’s enough analytical mumbo-jumbo from me. Let’s rate some characters! Ana - unattainable, much spook, doin’ a protecc. Jessica - The second oldest Torres sister, just working her crummy part time job, making most of the money for their family, keeping things afloat after the tragedy in their family. Makes a lot of bad decisions when it comes to men and sometimes I just wanted to shake her, but she was amazing nonetheless. Iridian - I started out liking her the best because she’s a writer, but as the story went on I kind of disconnected from her a bit. I still liked her character and how multi-dimensional she was, but it became more and more difficult for me to read the chapters from her perspective. Rosa - A saint. A warrior. A detective. Picked pretty much the only helpful boy in the story to hold her hand. The youngest, and possibly wisest sister. 1,000,000 out of 10. Rafe - I feel kind of bad for him… but like not a lot. He’s pretty much the worst. Also, I feel like the only reason I feel bad for him is because of his intense grief, but he also uses that grief to manipulate people so… like, I don’t actually feel bad for him at all. I won’t give away spoilers, but I’m not sure I liked how the book ended for him. Also, what the heck was up with that bracelet? I feel like that was important. John - Poop. Negative 1,000,000 out of 10. I also wish we’d gotten to see more of what happened to him because I’m curious. Peter - A nice boy. Kinda dumb. Unhelpful, but sweet. He’s trying anyway. Bit of a creep at times, but way better than John. Peter’s friends - Also very unhelpful, also creepy, don’t have a ton of redemptive qualities, but they weren’t the worst. Fairly neutral, actually. If this were a Greek play I’d say that these boys were the chorus. They’re typically present for the happenings of the story, but apart from their Mega-Unhelpfulness at the beginning, they don’t sway the plot all that much. That one priest guy - Not helpful. What was with the ants? Supposedly got in a fight with Rafe at some point?? Would have liked to see that. Alright, you’ve probably had enough of my random ramblings about these characters and literary devices that I sort of remember so I’ll wrap this review up now. Basically, what you need to know is that this was an excellent book with some mature themes and the plot and characters have much more to offer than a surface level scary story. It is probably one of my favorite ghost books I’ve ever read and it didn’t leave me with that aching heart feeling that other ghost books tend to leave me with. Okay. I’m pretty sure that’s all you need to know. Thank you for reading, I hope you had a good time and if you’re interested in this book I hope you check it out! I’d better get going because it would seem there is a hyena in my yard. Toodles! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52776262-tigers-not-daughters
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