Tam Lin, daughter of a tiger, has been very human for several years, very well-behaved. She keeps her head down and tries to forget the things she and her aunt did years ago, tries to forget the people they hurt. But when her aunt is found murdered and skinned, she gets sucked back of the supernatural, inheriting a dead fox in a box, a lot of enemies, and a really tangled mess of problems that all seem connected. Equipped with a trio of familiars, a girl she's falling in love with who might be tied to some of her past mistakes, a mysterious young First Nations man who's tied to a demon, and her own mettle, Tam must solve a dozen mysteries and also, maybe, stop the end of the world.
I loved this. I loved the combinations of world mythologies gathered together in Calgary. I liked Tam and all her complexities, and Janet and all her sharp edges. Jack was a real winner of a character and unraveling his story was so satisfying. I also liked the slightly nonlinear structure, with the author completely unafraid to take steps out of Tam's head and into the distant pasts to fill in details with stories both big and small. This was an excellent story.

You and I both knew that I would love this book. From the chaos queer MC to the mythical animal companions/familiars and enough Chinese folklore to fill a book all on its own, Aunt Tigress felt like it was made for me (at times). This was a wild ride from the beginning to the end and I was in it!!!

It’s hard to say the main character’s name without thinking of the villain from a different popular book series: Tam Lin. Was this intentional? I wanna say no, but who knows. It could have been a nod to that. It could have been a snub. It could have not mattered at all. But I couldn’t help thinking about him.😭

I love a magical realism/urban fantasy book. Give me magic in a world I know and I’ll eat that sh!t up! So the fact that this is all based in a magical version of Calgary, British Columbia was so perfect. Have I ever been there? Nope. I can imagine it tho: Mythical creatures living in harmony with humans (right under their noses). Maybe that’s the dreamer in me wishing this was a true story. 😂

This was quite a long story for a debut book. That may be why I didn’t give it a perfect rating. It definitely could have been cut down a bit, but overall I enjoyed the world building and all every single character.

Aunt Tigress had so much potential, and I was really looking forward to it. The mix of Chinese and Canadian First Nations mythology with urban fantasy and snarky humor sounded like it could be a knockout. Unfortunately, while the ingredients were all there, the execution didn’t quite come together for me. The book uses a "stories within a story" format, which felt like a great way to weave in the cultural mythology. The problem, though, is that it slows the pace to a crawl. The present-day plot barely moves forward as the story gets bogged down with backstories and tangents, which end up feeling more like filler than essential world-building.

I felt like the focus of the story got lost in the mix. Instead of developing the main character, the world, or the conflict, the book spends most of its time elsewhere. Tam Lin, our protagonist, has potential, but she ends up feeling like a bit of a blank slate. She’s supposed to be part tigress, but her reluctance to embrace her magical side just left me feeling a little detached. Honestly, the secondary characters were more interesting than she was, and that’s never a great sign for a protagonist. The romance didn’t help either. Tam and Janet have this instant chemistry that’s neither well-established nor particularly engaging. It felt like they were already in the middle of their relationship when the book started, and I couldn’t connect with their dynamic. I was expecting more slow burn, and instead, it felt like we were already in the “will-they-won’t-they” stage without any of the tension that builds up to it. It also didn’t help that Janet was too perfect—snarky, badass, and competent in a way that didn’t feel believable.

And as for the world-building, it didn’t live up to the promise. The setting felt disconnected from the magic, almost as if the magical world existed in a parallel universe that didn’t really affect the “real” one. I was hoping for a richer, more immersive experience, but instead, it felt flat, with the magical elements never fully integrated into the world we were supposed to care about.

All in all, Aunt Tigress had all the right ingredients but never quite pulled them together in a satisfying way. It’s a solid attempt at blending cultures and genres, but the pacing issues, lack of character depth, and underwhelming world-building left me wanting more. The audiobook was easy to follow and I thought the narration was quite good!

Bravo! I savored this fun book so it took longer to get to it. I loved everything about it. The narration was absolutely perfect! I loved our protagonist. I loved her family. I loved the introductions to culture and the knowledge shared.
What a wonderful gift!

🐅 BOOK REVIEW 🐅
AUNT TIGRESS by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin
4.5/5 🌟
Out now!

This book was so different from what I had anticipated, and it did not disappoint! I had a hard time putting it down and was quite impressed by how the author was able to craft vague notions together as the story became more complex. I can't wait to read what she puts out next!

This book follows Tam, a tiger in human skin, as she navigates college, love, and the supernatural world. When she finds out her mysterious aunt has died, things take a turn. Please read if you enjoy the following:

🐯 A perfect blend of urban fantasy and old world folklore
🐯 LGBTQ+ love and representation ❤️
🐯 First Nations and Chinese mythology
🐯 Spooky suit creatures

Thank you to @netgalley, @dawbooks and Spotify Audiobooks for the ARC.

This review will be up on THE FANTASY INN website shortly!

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I don't often read urban fantasy but this book made me want to pick up more of it!
The supernatural aspect was interesting and I liked how it developped. I had a little bit of issue connecting with the characters at time, including the main character, but I think that solved itself with more listening and learning more about them as the story went on.
Overall it felt dark cozy and supernatural! exactly what I wanted if not a little long.

This one is a struggle to parse for me. On the one hand, it’s an ambitious swirl of folklore, urban fantasy, mystery, and romance. On the other, it’s a disjointed and often difficult to navigate fever dream. I love a non-linear, complex tale, but something in the actual crafting of this one is lacking. Often it felt like the book itself was standing between me and knowing what happens in a way that wasn’t super productive. I felt like finishing was an obstacle to overcome, not a discovery to make.

Some of this I think is down to pacing and editing. I don’t mind a slow book, but the A plot meandered without direction so much that the interjected stories didn’t stand out in the way I think they hoped to. If it was TENSION QUESTIONS PUSH then a window to folklore, different times, context, this would have absolutely sung.

I can’t speak on representation here, but I think a First Nations perspective on this book would be helpful for me to hear. The plot is attempting to grapple with appropriation and destruction of First Nations culture and spirituality, but it doesn’t fully resolve that thread.

The secondary characters are interesting and have the building blocks of complexity, but don’t quite fully break out of being one-dimensional supports for the protagonist. Jack is maybe the MOST compelling of them, and I wish he’d had more time and development.

The audiobook is, for no fault of the narrator’s, tough to follow. The jumps in and out of the primary narrative are hard to differentiate, but that’s just the writing. I thought Jen Zhao’s narration was strong and nuanced despite this. I love the way Janet’s voice is performed.

Tam Lin is part tiger. Her mother, human, father and aunt, both tigers, immigrated to Calgary, Alberta, years earlier. Tam grew up knowing she was different, and violent, and after her father's tragic death, learned how to control her impulse to eat people. She also spent time, before this, apprenticed to her aunt Tigress, a violent grifter, and with her, hurt several people and supernatural beings, before deciding to stop and pull away. Tam also decided to pull away from everything supernatural, except supernatural beings keep showing up in her life.

Now older, she argues with her mother, dislikes her stepfather, but likes her stepbrother Paul. She misses her father terribly, also.

In university, she meets Janet in one of her classes. Janet is brash and forthright, and Tam finds her instantly attractive and the two get involved, despite Tam's concerns about hurting a human being.

Then, Tam learns that her Aunt Tigress has been killed, and Janet insists on helping Tam discover what happened. Jack, a medium, also helps, and Tam remembers her aunt, and all that she did with the forceful, older woman. Author Emily Yu-Xuan Qin relates these memories, and information about various supernatural beings living in Calgary as stories, which was a nice touch. But, there were so many stories, and so much information imparted that I found the story's pacing suffered.

These exposition chapters not only slowed down the plot, but after a while I found they overwhelmed the plot to the extent that I kind of lost where we were in the present, and what the point was, except to highlight how awful Aunt Tigress was.

Janet rubbed me the wrong way immediately. Her brashness and love of danger and decision to stick with Tam like glue rang warning bells for me, and though the reason is explained, I never really warmed to Janet. I also felt really uncomfortable with her fascination with the supernatural, and never felt comfortable with the dynamic of the relationship between her and Tam, and did not believe in them as a couple.

I wanted to love this book, and I did, for the first third or so, but found the plot, which was really simple (find out what happened to Aunt Tigress) kept meandering, and the more time I spent in this fantastic version of Calgary and with Tam and Janet, the less I cared about the outcome of Tam's search for answers.

I went back and forth between the book and audiobook, and though I liked Jen Zhao's voicework, especially as Aunt Tigress, I think I just got tired of the book by the halfway point, and had to force myself to finish.

This was really too bad, as I felt that this author's story was inventive, wonderfully weird and violent, with interesting supporting characters and terrific detail. And, it was great reading a story set in a Canadian city for a change, especially one with such a rich selection of supernatural beings and folklore.

Thank you to Netgalley, DAW, and Spotify Audiobooks for these ARCs in exchange for my review.

I think this was a really well crafted interesting story. The layers of mythology mixed in with main plot was compelling and gave more depth to the world. I loved the moral grayness of all the characters. Not sure how I feel about the romance. I wish it had been a slower burn. Did appreciate the intimacy issues and how that was handled. Overall I think fans of The Spear Cuts Through Water would enjoy this narrative style.

Rep: Chinese author and MC, lesbian MC and romance

I really wanted to like this more than I did. It has all the ingredients for something truly intersectional and fun in terms of mythological fantasy. The folkloric tales reminded me of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills stories. I was even excited for the urban fantasy aspect of it because I love a good story about migration of stories and folklores across time and space. And honestly that was my favorite part. The pacing of these peppered in stories was way too abrupt, and jarring from the main narrative. I could even look past that. What I couldn't get past finally was Janet, the love interest who is SUCH a toxic red flag. Very quickly I was sure there wasn't much the story could do to make me root for this romance, which was endgame whether I liked it or not. I wish I could say Tam deserves better, but honestly, I'm not even sure I know enough about Tam's own internal landscape that isn't a reaction and convenient narrative band aid for the author to get it from one point to the next. It's a shame it was such a hot mess, but perhaps some people can look past enough of it and enjoy how it's steeped in the clash of old legends from the world over.

Thank you to NetGalley and Spotify Audiobooks for the chance to listen to this book, all opinions are my own.

Aunt Tigress by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin is quite the epic ride and was unexpected in many ways. Yes, it fits the urban fantasy vibe as described in its synopsis but it is also peppered with myths and stories from First Nations and Chinese culture. It almost reminded me of the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo with its stories within stories.

I think anyone reading this book should be prepared for a long, sometimes winding story. All of the pieces fit together in the end (some connections I saw right away and others were a surprise) but the story does take its time getting there. This is not a quick read. (The 17 hour audiobook should really have been the first clue to this but I wasn’t totally paying attention to that at the beginning). Some parts felt a little unnecessary to the overall story but that is not my call to make and I am sure they felt relevant to the author!

The main character Tam is a bit of a mystery and hard to read, she carries a lot of pain (for her losses, for the things she’s done, for the world she is forced to live in) and that makes her very unlikeable at times. I wanted to root for her but also got frustrated with her choices and her treatment of other characters. .

Janet was definitely my favorite, even after her true motivations were revealed and she and Tam were honest with each other, her loyalty to Tam and her desire to leap into danger no matter what was a lovable trait. I also loved Jack, his story broke my heart and I just want to give him a hug. There are a lot of other interesting characters that I really enjoyed as well.

I loved the queer rep throughout the book but be aware of some on the page homophobia.

Audiobook review: I enjoyed the narration and the voices of the different characters were clear and there weren't any weird pauses or pronunciations. For some reason the individual stories felt a little disjointed but I think their separation would have been much more obvious in the physical book.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my for and honest review.

This unique spin on culturally specific mythology was both mesmerizing and surprising as it threaded its way through the character dynamics and key plot progressions.

For me, this search for Aunt Tigress struggled mostly with pacing where it was either moving you forward clearly or was lingering in some moments of the character relationships that hindered both the plot and the pace. At times, it also felt like the author wanted to fit so much into this story that didn’t help me stay connected to the plot or characters.

Our FMC was so well developed that the flatter dimensions of the supporting cast of characters really stood out. I wish we had gone deeper in a way that cultivated more emotional investment.

The story was so different from what I was expecting and that alone made me enjoy the book.

I think this is an ambitious, cozier fantasy as a debut that is rich with mythology and lovable monsters. I’ve seen this book tagged as a horror book and think that’s a fairly tremendous miss in overall marketing.

This was a weird wee story with an interesting premise but the actual execution was lacking. The story was quite boring and the main characters were insufferable..

4.25 / 5

Tam has never fit. Literally. Born to a human and a Chinese tiger spirit, her father is taken from her early on in a terrible accident. She is left without help navigating how to function in a human skin and in a human world. In her father's place, for a time, his sharp-tongued and aggressively motivated sister guides Tam through the world of living myths. That ends when one lesson goes in a haunting direction leaving Tam's aunt an exile to her life.

Tam takes to trudging through the best she can. Just when she thinks she's starting to get a grip on things-- enrolled in college classes, a wonderful relationship with a step-brother, at least an understanding with her mother, and a possible new romance-- her Aunt's death brings it all crashing down around her shoulders. Mystery, disaster, and a spread of new acquaintances of both the spirit world and the real one send her onto journeys she couldn't dream of.

"Aunt Tigress" draws heavily on Chinese and First Nations mythologies to create a world that is expansive. It explores what it would be like to have different spiritual ways to coexist and be equally valid. Some of the solutions and integrations are indeed just plain creative regardless of being tied to something more uncommon in traditional publishing. Beyond being magical they also work as a good tool to introduce readers to some core concepts and stories and address some real world issues facing minorities and the treatment of First Nations people today.

This is a story full of very gray characters. Tam's love interest, Janet, is blunt and forward. I found I was never quite letting my guard down with her as a character. Tam herself is torn between what she believes her tiger spirit represents, its aggressiveness, and what she feels she wants to be. At her introduction the reader has to wonder if Aunt Tigress is out for herself or just the embodiment of that ferocity doing the best she knows how. There are a set of step parents/guardians who have a very messy relationship with their assistant-foster-son. Despite unease about that unit, I found myself adoring the husband Rajah. Tam's mother might be seen as cold, but she is also clearly loving. It's nice to see characters who are as equally flawed and virtuous -or not. It leaves the reader wondering about intent and possible twists throughout.

Another element I really appreciated was what a broad spectrum of family was shown. Using literal strings is a beautiful image I'm glad was brought in. These ties are not just between the human characters, but the loyalty and bond that exists in this very odd limbo between servant and friend space. Navigating the different ways parents and children relate was also appreciated.

The romantic subplot's structure was unique. It skips the pining and goes straight to attachment. Normally the extreme jump would irritated me, but throughout the story there are real bumps and road blocks and a pair that pulls back at times instead of continuing to fall into something like a miscommunication trap. Does that make it the healthiest relationship? Given certain plot points that would be spoilers, probably not. It did, however, feel fresh. It also has to be said that having a traditional family with a parent who wasn't homophobic was VERY nice.

The pacing did at times seem a bit slow. However I also really enjoyed the stories within the stories. I wouldn't want to risk loosing those as they give some of the best depth to the characters. I'm afraid that would be the cost of making this shorter.

At the end of the day, even if I wasn't always sure how I felt about this book or it's characters as they kept me guessing in a lot of ways, it was one of the most fun romps I've been on in ages. It really brings the gritty feeling that my early days of experiencing urban fantasy when I was a teenager myself back. I truly loved the mythical elements to this and how it felt as much an earnest world view as magic. I cannot speak for anyone of these cultures, however.

It's a bit of an investment, but I'm glad I ran this marathon.

I was really excited to read Aunt Tigress, since I love learning about different lore and mythology. I will say, Aunt Tigress is an absolute win in that regard. I was fascinated by everything I learned throughout this story. I will say, I’m not part of the cultures that the lore is pulled from, so I can’t speak on the appropriateness of the mythology used. The urban fantasy world building was solid, especially for a debut story. The struggles I had with this book were in two main areas. The first was the pacing. There were points where it slowed down so far that I was ready to stop reading had I not had access to the audiobook. Additionally, the bouncing between first person POV and third person POV took me out of the story every time it switched. The other was the direction of the story for whether it wanted to be a horror story or a romance story because it never married together to be a combination of the two. The audiobook for this was fine. I didn’t have any issues with Jen Zhao’s performance. I did prefer the audio as opposed to eyeball reading. My lack of love for the audiobook tied back to the issues I had with the story overall.

This is one of those books where I think I ultimately like the pay off more than the reading experience. Let me explain.

The Writing:
This novel has a slightly unconventional approach to storytelling from a Western perspective. It draws a lot of inspiration from its First Nations and Chinese descended characters, and I feel like a lot of that is echoed in the format. It's very common for the main storyline to be interrupted to tell the stories of the characters, but almost in a fairytale/mythology sort of way. While I ultimately do really like it and appreciate these little tangents, it wasn't something I was used to or ready for so it initially disrupted my immersion into the book.

The Characters:
I quite like the cast being assembled here and can see how they'd make for a decent core to start a new urban fantasy series. Everyone has been impacted by Aunt Tigress, no matter what walk of life they're from, and they all have incredibly different reactions to her antics.

The Reveal:
But what really made me appreciate the book and firmly lodged it in my brain is the reveal. I feel like I'll be chewing on that all week and would love to re-read the whole thing, knowing what I know now.

Art:
Also I just really need to call out that banger of a cover. Excellent, excellent work.

Audiobook:
The narrator is so natural that it took me a while to pull myself out and actually analyze what they were doing. They provide such an excellent and seamless narration, each character given their own easily identifiable voice without needing to hear the character name. It reminded me of Natalie Naudus, so now I feel like I'll need to check out Jen Zhao's work.

Audio review: narrator Jen Zhao did a nice job bringing this book to life! I enjoyed the narration and it was great quality.

Book review: I've got a bit of mixed feelings about this one. I loved the premise, and in some ways it delivered.

The blending and inclusion of Chinese and First Nation mythology was really interesting and I really liked all the stories included in the book. I do think they could have been placed better at times to not disrupt the flow of the story. The mythological creatures and beings were really cool to read about! I found the love interest so unlikable, and really wanted better for the MC! It is a kind of long book, but I didn't mind.

This was a lot of fun! I really liked how the folklores of different cultures were handled; it felt very respectful and relevant to the story. The plot is fast paced with a lot of threads coming together nicely throughout, and Aunt Tigress is an intriguing villain. I also liked how different characters' back stories were woven in as separate chapters, though other readers might find that jarring. None of the main characters particularly stood out to me (and some readers might find Tam a bit too much of a sad sack as a main character), but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the story, especially there are some very fun side characters.

The audio narration was fantastic - the narrator both emotes really well without overdoing it and does a really good job of differentiating characters with different voices that don't sound fake. She actually reminded me a bit of Natalie Naudus, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other books she narrates.