The Night Circus

The Night Circus

 

Erin Morgenstern

 

 

(2.5 stars)

 

*Spoilers Below*
I feel like my review will probably re-state what most others think, but here it goes.

 

It's pretty hard to review, because there were parts of the book that I loved and parts I hated.

The one thing that really keeps you reading is the excellent setting and descriptions of the circus. I did feel like this took up the majority of the book, which would be fine if there were any sort of interesting plot, characters, or pacing (which there isn't). You really feel like you're at this wondrous circus where you have no idea how things are accomplished. You sense the smells, sights, and sounds around you and I think that's very hard to achieve, and very well done.

 

However, nothing else held me to this story. The characters were bland and forgettable. Celia is alright, and in the beginning I really felt for her because her father was so horrible, but as things went on, I just didn't care about her or Marco's storyline or the challenge in general. I understand the 'rules' are kept hidden as mystery to both the characters and the reader, but it doesn't give us much to go on until the explanation at the end (which was horrible). We found out after all that time that these two guys have a feud of which version of magic is better so they have their students fight to the death without telling them that they're fighting to the death? And they cause multiple innocent people to die in this challenge alone, I can't imagine what the past challenges have done.

 

The love story didn't do much for me, especially because I didn't care about the characters. The fact that the best part of the book was the setting is great, but the fact that about 350/500 pages were describing the circus makes it feel SO long and drawn out. It took me a while to get through it and I still feel like I didn't read a story, but a collection of poems or short stories (which may have been a better option).

 

I'm most upset that I was tricked into reading this by the wonderful descriptions and writing just to find out that there's not a very good story underneath.