When You Trap a Tiger

 I did not enjoy When You Trap a Tiger. I thought it was slow and confusing and I never felt connected to any of the characters (Ricky was okay, I guess). It was honestly a bit of drudgery just to finish it. Apparently, the book's genre is "magical realism," which I discovered while reading reviews on goodreads to figure out why people liked it. Basically, the main character (Lily) is totally convinced that she sees and talks to a giant tiger and that doing what the tiger says (specifically, releasing stories from bottles) will save her halmoni (Korean grandma) from the brain cancer that is killing her. I kept thinking, "Wait, is she actually going down into the basement at 2 am to talk to a nonexistent tiger? Is she going to wake up and realize it's a dream to help her cope with grief and loss and her mom and sister mistreating her?" But she never wakes up, folks. She just talks to a giant, magical tiger the whole book long and then her halmoni dies and somehow the tiger helped her through it (the tiger is connected to the Korean folktales her halmoni told her growing up, but nothing was ever clear to me). 

Ok, things that didn't make sense:

1. The giant magical tiger Lily talks to.

2. How Lily's mom could uproot the entire family to move to a new state and NOT tell her kids that they're moving because her mom is dying of brain cancer. Like, why would she not have shared that with them? So confused.

3. Sam, Lily's teenaged sister, is a pessimistic jerk, but then hooks up with a super nice friendly cool girl over a period of 3 days (the entire duration of the book is about a week and Sam doesn't meet Jensen until day 4) and she sneaks out in the middle of the night to hang out with her and NOBODY has a problem with it, which makes me feel like the book is pushing an agenda.

4. Sam is mean to Lily and her mom all the time and that really never gets resolved.

5. Seriously, the tiger. What? Is Lily actually seeing a tiger or not? And if she is, WHAT?? And if she isn't, WHAT??