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Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern


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Rating: 3 stars

The Night Circus is an experience! I'm not joking, Erin Morgenstern is amazing at making the reader feel like they are actually in the scene she is describing. Even though I read this book 2 months ago, I distinctly remember the descriptions of smells and sights of the circus the most. The smells of cotton candy and caramel corn are now Night Circus smells in my mind.

The Night Circus follows the lives of Celia and Marco, two talented people who can do magic. Their guardians put them in a magical contest to the death and the circus is the setting of this battle.  But what the guardians did not count on was the length of this contest and the fact that the two contestants would start to fall in love.

I did like this book, but I think it was overhyped by Booktubers for me. Every video I saw was people who were in love with this book, but I wasn't as in love with it. It could be that I read this book over a month instead of in like a week, but I felt kind of disconnected with the characters, which is something I need to fall in love with a book.




I think I liked the plot more than the characters themselves, which is funny because this isn't a very plot driven story. I loved reading these fantastical things that Marco and Celia created for the circus as they were very unique. I'd love to visit the ice garden and make a wish on the wishing tree. The writing was beautifully vivid and the plot twists were quite heart-wrenching, though they would have been better if I was more invested in the characters.

I think my main problem with the characters was a lack of character development. I loved the story at the beginning because I had a good sense of who Celia and Marco were, but as the book went on, nothing really changed which was disappointing. It could be because there was quite a large cast of characters that Celia and Marco weren't developed too much.

Overall, I did love the experience this book gave me but I was a little disappointed with the tiny amount of character development. I'd definitely recommend this book to people like me who read a lot of YA books and are looking for adult books to transition into that genre.

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