Review: Tigers, Not Daughters

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lauded author Samantha Mabry's Tigers, Not Daughters is a poignant novel of magical realism about three sisters, processing the loss of their older sister. Jessica, Rosa, and Iridian mourn the loss of their older sister Ana and seem stuck in the world with their neglectful father, Rafael. Their mother died due to complications after Rosa's birth, and now, with Ana gone, the sisters are lost in their grief, each a little too isolated from the other. What happened to Ana? Did she fall or commit suicide? Do any of the sisters know why she might have jumped? Did anyone see? Does anyone really know what happened that night? Now, a year after her death, odd things are happening in the Torres home, and a hyena that escaped from the zoo is menacing the streets. But the hyena seems drawn to the Torres' neighborhood. The Torres sisters are left wondering if Ana's spirit has lingered to tell them something. Is it that they should leave? Stay?

This is a moving young adult novel exploring grief. I especially found the arc for Iridian's character moving. Each of the sisters lost so much when Ana died, but Iridian's loss is made palpable in her writing in her journals, at one point filling page after page with the words, "I'm sorry." The reader experiences the sisters' loss and their father's apathy. Like a hyena lose and lost in a city, the Torres sisters feel unmoored without Ana and the spirit of a functional family she represented.

The audiobook is narrated by Luis Moreno in a subdued tone but captures the elegiac nature of the three sisters trying to process what they have lost and where they are headed.

CW: domestic violence, physical violence, animal death, allusions to suicide

I received a paper Advanced Review Copy of this novel from Algonquin Press in exchange for an honest review and a courtesy audiobook copy of this book from Libro.fm.

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