Tiger's Mouth

A thrilling story about ambition and friendship that left me breathless. Chen and Owens are at once familiar and unlike any characters I’ve ever met, their decades-long dance between artifact and vulnerability slowly revealing the very nature of intimacy itself. Tiger’s Mouth dazzled me

Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Tiger’s Mouth vividly captures the tumultuous beauty of growing up and growing into oneself, as ‘the Jacks’ tangle with each other, with the past, with a changing world, and with the peril of truly being seen. I loved this dazzling, incisive, and tender story of friendship

Emma Brodie, author of Into the Blue

Sharp-edged . . . Tan brings the two friends to vivid life, showing how they define themselves in the other’s image

Rebecca Kauffman, award-winning author of The Gunners and The House on Fripp Island

Brilliant ... With its complex friendships and sharp observations, Tiger’s Mouth is a thoughtful portrait of the ways people reinvent themselves to find belonging—and the costs of doing so

Publishers Weekly, starred review

Compelling ... expertly examines class, privilege, and family duty through the unlikely relationship between two Jacks from wholly different worlds

Booklist, starred review

Beautifully written and well-paced

Shelf Awareness

A thoughtful and gratifying novel, suggesting class may be the most meaningful barrier to friendship

Library Journal

A remarkable achievement: a novel whose deep attention to character is equaled by its propulsive plotting and incisive social commentary. Lucy Tan pairs a Sally Rooney–like eye for psychological nuance with a thoughtful exploration of 2020s America, from racial inequity to the paradoxes of healthcare and technology. The result is a wise, clear-eyed, and compassionate work of art

Kirkus Reviews

A rare page-turner that is also compassionate, wise, and finely observed. Through a cast of characters who come to feel as familiar as family, Lucy Tan asks questions about the costs of power and privilege, friendship across class, and seemingly unalterable societal strictures. This is a novel—assured, propulsive, insightful—about what we inherit and what we create for ourselves, and the relationships that might transcend it all

Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists