Tiger Lily, the way the author portrayed her within these pages, is a no-nonsense, face the problem head on, heads will roll kind of gal. Maybe I'm biased because I always hated the way she was less than developed in the original Barrie novel. Is it possible to love Peter Pan but utterly hate the way Wendy, Tinkerbelle, and Tiger Lily were written in their origin forms? Must be, because I did. This book helps with a lot of that irritation.
This Tiger Lily is reeling after finding her sister's body shredded by a massive predator, one that her people just happen to worship. She commits the ultimate sacrilege when she decides to hunt the beast to save other innocents from its claws. Her community thanks her by kicking her out of their town. It's harsh, but she's not surprised.
One person volunteers to go with Tiger Lily into excommunication, and I really enjoyed the 'will they or won't they' of that relationship. The author doesn't skirt around sexual tension, but there's nothing graphic or offensive in the way it's done. Well, unless you find blood offensive. There's a lot of that in the novel, and Tiger Lily doesn't shy away from violence when necessary.
The author teased a follow up story titled 'Surviving Wendy Darling'. I'll read that one, too.

TLDR: The biggest sin this book commits is just being boring. Unskilled writing and an unlikable main character made me DNF after a few chapters. There are just things I would rather be reading than this. 2 stars for not being particularly offensive, but there are better Peter Pan retellings out there.

Surviving Tiger Lily is a dark Peter Pan retelling told from Tiger Lily's point of view. The story starts with Tiger Lily's younger sister being brutally murdered by a mysterious beast and Tiger Lily vowing to avenge her death and murder the beast. I was pretty excited to pick up this book, as I love a good Peter Pan retelling, but this one did not do it for me. DNF after a few chapters.

This book is very slow. We are thrown into a funeral for the young girl right off the bat, but given absolutely no reason to care about the characters or their grief. The beginning events drag on and I found myself getting bored very quickly. What hints I did get of the grander plot were not enough for me to want to keep reading, and what I had read was dull and uninteresting.

Tiger Lily is the only character I got a good sense of, and I found her rather unlikable. To be fair to her we are not introduced to her at her best moment but even with that she is just not a very fun main character. The book tried to tell me she was fun and mischievous but the all we see of her is a dull, serious girl with nothing going for her to make me care about her story.

This connects to my main issue with this book, there is a lot of tell and absolutely no show. This book manages to both throw you into the world building with a lot of questions and no answers while still using entirely exposition to explain everything that is going on. The writing is just... not great in all honesty.

None of the things I have outlined here are particularly egregious, beyond just making the beginning of this book a real drag. Unfortunately for this book, the beginning is the one chance you have to convince someone to read your book. While I typically give books I DNF one star, I just didn't have the drive to finish this book to decide if it really deserves one star. 2 stars and DNF.

I read the first couple of chapters and then gave up. While I am familiar with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, and Neverland in general, the author makes a lot of assumptions about that knowledge and immediately starts referencing the different societies and creatures living in Neverland without any sort of set up. The narration by the main character is confusing and switches back and forth between the past and present in the same sentences. Where is the connection between the wild animal that killer her sister and Peter Pan? I decided that I didn't care enough to keep reading and started something new.