The Tiger's Curse Series

I've spent the past two weeks knee deep in teen lit that has either been  recommended by friends or critically acclaimed.. One series I was recommended was Tiger's Curse. It was fine and I could tell the author was really trying to push her research on India into the book, but there was something I couldn't get over: the characters.

The basic plot was an average American girl who gets swept up in an adventure the requires her to save the man she loves from a 300 year curse that binds him to the body of a tiger. BUT more than anything it consisted of the typical teen novel set-up that has become all the rage:

Hot guy likes average girl who continues to put herself down and refuses to except his love because he could have someone better.

Oh gosh.

And the only depth to the female protagonist stemmed from her incessant ramblings on how "average" and "unworthy" she was. This completely disgusts me. I get why girls love the whole idea that an average girl can get an attractive guy BUT does this dream life have to consists of a minute by minute dissection of how her looks don't measure up to his? Personally this would exhaust me and I refuse to have my life be consumed by self-deprecation.

But more that just low self-worth, these girls also end up fitting into a very specific mold. They are also wisecracking gals who have yet to say anything truly witty. Instead they live off of common overused sayings that make my heart break ESPECIALLY when the lead guy comments on how sarcastic and clever they are. GAG. They are neither. They are one-dimensional twits developed by authors who spend more time recreating characters than developing their own.

Now on to the Romance:

The story line was decent, the cultural history was well thought out,  but the romance was lacking. I once heard that the only way to make people connect to a love story is to first make them connect to the characters. I just couldn't. They had nothing to them. They were shadows of the romantic characters that had come before them AND they had the audacity to read Shakespeare as a romantic tacit. Nice try. Shakespeare's good, but even he couldn't save this. The only time the series got better is when they introduced the Salvatore Brother Situation.

SBS is when the heroine falls for a kind safe guy who ends up disappearing and she has to rely on his devilish handsome brother to get him back. In the process, the second bro falls in love with her and she starts to love him too. Unfortunately, this same situation happened hundreds of years ago so there is already trust issues involved between the brothers *drawn in breath* Draaamma!

So how will it end?! Well you've got about 2,000 pages to find out.

I get why girls like this drabble, it's the same reason that keeps Hallmark and Lifetime movies in business. We crave romance to the point that we'll eat up whatever half-eaten raw bone they throw at us.

But enough of my rambling. The worst part is I ended up reading all four books. It got to the point that I could finish them in about two hours. I was more curious than anything. I kept thinking that maybe if I gave it more time the story would develop. It's like when you watch the first episodes of a season and they don't have that pizzazz, but by the time you hit episode 5 you can't stop watching? Well I was hoping for an episode 5 moment and I guess it kind of happened (thanks to SBS). By the end I didn't want the main characters to die in a brutal blood bath, so I guess the author accomplished her goal?

Rating: 2/5
-Lou