Author: Annie Sullivan
Publisher: Blink
Released: September 10, 2019
Received: NetGalley

You guys know that I can’t resist a retelling! Tiger Queen, written by Annie Sullivan, retells Frank Stockton’s The Lady or the Tiger?

Due to ancient law, Princess Kateri must battle in the arena to take up the mantle and rule like her family before her. As much as Kateri wants to rule, and more than that – protect her people, Kateri knows she cannot win.

So she makes a deal with the devil. It’d be more accurate to say that she’s about to make a deal with somebody she never dreamed of working with, but the desert is the only one providing a solution to the predicament she’s in.

“I would be the desert’s justice, mightier than any tiger.”

I went into Tiger Queen with such high hopes – the cover, the description, the promise! It’s all there, and it was more than enough to get me really excited to see what Anne Sullivan had created here.

Maybe it wasn’t entirely fair of me to have gotten too amped up, though, as ultimately, I did find myself to be more than a little disappointed. The feminist themes that I thought would be dominant here (titles like Tiger Queen and the promises of a woman doing what it takes to protect her people)… wasn’t as strong as I had hoped.

I think what disappointed me the most is Kateri’s sincere belief that she couldn’t handle this situation independently. More than that, she didn’t believe she could do it without breaking the rules that her people have come to rely on…which felt kind of problematic.

Overall, this was a decent read. Not what I hoped it would be, but still something capable of holding my attention.

Thanks to Blink and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.