Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern


There has been little time to read lately, hence the hiatus last week. I have an interesting book to blog about for this week’s review. Erin Morgenstern’s first novel called The Night Circus is marketed towards the Harry Potter audience and comes with a ton of hype. It debuted a few weeks ago. The story revolves around a challenge between two competitors, yet they don’t know what the challenge is. The venue for their challenge is a circus, which shows up unannounced in cities all over the world. The circus becomes a huge draw and attracts devoted followers.

The two competitors start out as young kids. Celia learns from experience, Marco learns from books. Their paths don’t cross until the circus forms when they are about 20 years old. Celia is the main star at the circus; Marco manipulates the circus from afar, as the owner’s assistant. Somehow they fall in love with each other and it turns into a romantic novel. The very end of the book links it all together and makes you wonder.

My thoughts: The beginning is captivating. The world created by the author is really cool. However, as the story progresses, we are introduced to more and more illusions which become less and less believable. The best example of this is the father becoming ghost-like (more ghost-like magic occurs later on) or the worlds created inside some of the tents. For me, the story became too fake. I’m unsure how Harry Potter fans would feel…maybe they would be enthralled, maybe not (although I’m sure nothing compares to Harry).

I was also put off by the love part of the book even though I knew it was coming. This book wasn’t for me but I thought I would give it a shot and change up my usual reading habits. I’m sure others would enjoy it. I’d be interesting to hear others’ perspectives. If you want to give it a read, shoot me an e-mail/text/tweet/facebook message and I’ll send the book to you.

My rating for The Night Circus: 2 stars out of 5. Get it here!

P.S. I’m excited for the next few weeks. Got some great books coming up!

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