The Night Tiger was a 2019 release by author Yangsze Choo. It was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and also featured on The Big Jubilee Book List.
Yangsze Choo is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ghost Bride and The Fox Wife (coming in 2024).
I saw the book featured on Between The Covers and decided to give it a read. I was instantly intrigued by the premise as it didn’t sound like anything I’ve read before.
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Plot
In 1930s colonial Malaya, 11-year-old Ren has been given an unusual mission. He is tasked by his master, who is now deceased, to find his severed missing finger and reunite it with his body.
Ren has forty-nine days to complete this task, or his master’s soul will roam the earth forever.
Meanwhile, Ji Lin is an apprentice dressmaker who moonlights as a dancehall girl to help her mother pay her debts. During one dance, her partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir – a severed finger.
As time starts to run out for Ren’s mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur. There are rumours of tigers who turn into men. Is there a logical explanation or is something more mysterious to blame?
In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin’s paths will cross in ways they will never forget.
The Night Tiger Book Review
I’m a bit on the fence with this one!
The book was really well written and full of description. This created a really immersive read and painted a vivid picture of what life was like in Malaysia in the early 20th century.
I’ve never read a book set in colonial Malaysia and I did enjoy learning about the culture and local folklore.
There’s quite a mix of genres so it’s hard to know where to place this book. It was historical fiction but also featured romance, murder mystery and a large dose of fantasy and magic realism.
I think this mix of topics may be why I wasn’t as gripped by the story as I had hoped. There just felt like there were too many different themes.
The mystery itself was good and I didn’t predict the outcome. It was full of twists and turns and this was the part of the story that I enjoyed the most.
I wasn’t really invested in the romance and I couldn’t warm to Shin at all. I found him to be quite controlling and I just felt Ji Lin deserved better.
Overall, I was slightly disappointed with the Night Tiger. I had such high hopes for it but it just didn’t live up to my expectations. While I did enjoy certain elements of the book, as a whole I was as bit underwhelmed.
What books are like The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo?
The following books have similar themes to The Night Tiger:
- Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- The Library of Legends by Janie Chang