I just don't know about this one. 
if it had been marketed as "sad story that examines a young boy's relationship with his mother and father and the consequences of conditional love and distrust" i would have been more prepared and liked it way better i think. 

It's not really about a boy who has the spirit of a tiger at all but about his relationship with his family. 
It's told backwards which is cool, hyperlink style where each thing mentioned triggers a backstory and then each thing in that backstory triggers a different one etc on and on. The whole book is centered around one event and then technically nothing happens after that, the rest of the book is just context. 

I didn't like how much of the book was centered on the abuse of the mother and her being SA'd, nor that we know next-to-nothing about the tiger. The writing was really good and the ending (which is the beginning) was also really good.