Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Pam's Review: Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck


Tiger's Curse
~Colleen Houck

Reading level: Ages 12 and up 
Hardcover: 448 pages 
Publisher: Splinter 
Publish Date: January 11, 2011 
ISBN-10: 1402784031 
ISBN-13: 978-1402784033

From the author's website:
Passion. Fate. Loyalty. 
Would you risk it all to change your destiny? 
The last thing Kelsey Hayes thought she’d be doing this summer was trying to break a 300-year-old Indian curse. With a mysterious white tiger named Ren. Halfway around the world. But that’s exactly what happened. Face-to-face with dark forces, spellbinding magic, and mystical worlds where nothing is what it seems, Kelsey risks everything to piece together an ancient prophecy that could break the curse forever. 
Tiger’s Curse is the exciting first volume in an epic fantasy-romance that will leave you breathless and yearning for more.
Kelsey is a high school graduate and needs a summer job before college. The temp agency she went to set her up to work for the circus in town for two weeks. She helps sell tickets, clean up after the shows, and brings the tiger, Ren, its food. There is something about the tiger that captivates her. Kelsey finds herself spending more and more time with him, reading him stories and poetry. She even gets daring and pats him through the bars. Near the end of her employment she gets offered another job to travel to India and help Ren travel comfortably to a tiger sanctuary there. She agrees, but little does she know that Ren is really a cursed prince, and she is about to go on the adventure of her life.

My thoughts:
This was the first book I’ve read with the setting in India; it was so different, it was so unique. I learned, through Kelsey, some myths and legends about the country, but I’m not sure if they were made up for the book or not. Either way, they were really interesting.

I generally liked Kelsey’s character. Her parents died when she was young, but she still turned out to be a caring, genuinely nice person. However, her character bothered me in the way she doubted herself. She thought Ren was too good for her, too handsome for her, basically that he was out of her league. It might be normal for a 17 year old girl to think like that, I wouldn’t know, it’s been a while. But the fact that she self doubted herself so much was a bit of a turn off for me.

Something about this book kept reminding me of the Twilight series as well. Maybe the fact that Ren was really old, really rich, and wanted to be with Kelsey even though she thought he could do better. But then I reminded myself that that is the way a lot of books are. If there is a vampire or shapeshifter who is old, they’re probably going to be rich. It kind of goes hand in hand I guess. Well, as long as they invest right.

Ren and Kelsey had romance, but I didn’t always feel it. Sometimes it just didn’t seem believable to me. Also, in the adventures that they had together pretty scary things went on, but I didn’t even feel like Kelsey was scared. This wasn’t enough to keep me from liking the book though. In fact I had the one more chapter problem. It was one of those books that you say to yourself, I’ll just read one more chapter, and you can’t stop. I went to bed way too late because of this; I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

I am already reading and enjoying the next book in the series. Review to come.

Buy the book here.



My Rating:

Pam


Book provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

2 comments:

  1. I still find it hart to believe that a really old person? can fall in love with a 17 year old. I think he will be bored pretty soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Seems like that would happen in reality, but all these fictional men seem to be liking the youngins. :)

    ReplyDelete