Caraval By Stephanie Garber

This book is fantastic! I am the kind of person who gets shy to leave reviews but man I just to leave one for this book. I received this book in great condition. I was so happy when it came. I love love love reading. Let me tell you i couldn’t put this book down at all. It was a stay up all night kind of book the best kind there is. Reading this book helped feel as if i could be there and see what was going on (if that makes sense). I felt that I could put my troubles away and be in a happier more fun and exciting world where the adventures kept going and didn’t stop. I encourage people to get this book if they love adventure, fast paced, fun, and creative. This book was incredible to read. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series! Stephanie Garber is an incredible and creative writer. I will most definitely be reading more of her books.

I began reading Caraval with some pretty high expectations. Before delving into the book myself, I had read many positive reviews from bloggers who managed to get their hands on an ARC copy of the book. Quite a few bloggers likened the aura of Caraval to The Night Circus, which is, in my opinion, a pretty huge compliment. So, the big Q: Were my expectations met?

You bet your cookies they were.

This book was a fantastic combination of romance, fantasy, adventure, and mystery. The writing is fairly strong yet simple, and it allows you to fully focus on the story and its characters without being distracted by overly-embellished diction. There were some moments of repetitiveness in detail and description, but these moments didn’t take too much away from the story. Also, the inclusion of letters within the text helped give the story an extra touch of characterization, and though I rarely notice this, the design of some of the pages are lovely and add to the magic of Caraval.

Stephanie Garber did a wonderful job in bringing her world of Caraval to life with an abundance of sensory details that envelop you and carry you deeper into the mysterious goings-on within Caravel. The author skillfully creates a world where magic is real and powerful, and it acts as an ambiguous force that is acknowledged, though not wielded by anyone and everyone. The magic of Caraval has its own set of rules by which it functions, and the characters taking part in the game soon learn that nothing is as it seems in this elaborate performance orchestrated by ringmaster, Legend.

Speaking of Legend, the characters are another strong aspect of this book. Scarlett and Tella (short for Donatella) share a strong sisterly bond in which they are willing to sacrifice themselves for one another. The two girls are similar to Marianne and Eleanor from Sense and Sensibility. Scarlett behaves as the sensible one while Tella is governed by feeling. Each girl has a particular strength of character, and their differing views of the world lead them into an adventure that shapes who they are and who they will become.

At first, I was not much a fan of Tella, for she seems selfish and self-centered (and also a kleptomaniac?). But my opinion changed (for the most part, anyways) towards the end, as I realized she simply wishes for both her and her sister to be free of their ridiculously cruel and abusive father and to live their lives the way they desire. As for Scarlett, I found her character to be the most relatable, and even though she is the “sensible” one, her thought processes and actions within the game were understandable given the circumstances. She made many mistakes, but they were somewhat forgivable as she made them all with good intent, the intent to save her sister.

Besides familial love, I loved the relationship between Scarlett and Julian (*SWOON*). Julian is an interesting character whose charm stems from his mysteriousness and severe lack of hero qualities. He is an enigma who holds an abundance of secrets that are slowly unearthed throughout the story. And though his words and actions are often questionable, it is hard not to love him for what/who he is. Both he and Scarlett are very independent and of their own mind, but their situation requires them to work together to achieve their differing goals. The connection between the two is not immediate and I fell in love with the slow-burn romance that formed between the two over the course of four or five days.

I was really surprised by the level of sinisterness the author incorporated to describe Legend and his grand performance of Caraval, which has an undercurrent of deceit and cruelty that is overshadowed by vivid color and dazzling magic tricks. As the competition goes on, Legend morphs into a faceless villain whose schemes come to a suspenseful head during a final act in which the game comes to an end and the truth is revealed. The last part of the book is fast-paced, thrilling, and full of tension that had me biting my nails and quickly turning one page after another, desperate to know how it all ends.

All in all, I loved this book. I thought the author did an excellent job in portraying a sisterly bond that is not entirely perfect, but is strong, as it is built on love. And the characters were well-developed, though they have much more room to grow and to mature, especially Tella. The story is captivating from beginning to end and the magic of Caraval will give readers a sense of wonder that carries them above the clouds until they are set back down on the ground in the stunning conclusion of this book. I can’t recommend this story enough. I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series!

The first 3/4 were amazing. I felt like the end was a bit disappointing. I still enjoyed the book very much.

“Lovely, dark, and deep,” from Frost’s poem about the woods, are words that can also describe Stephanie Garber’s unique Caraval. Although fixed firmly in the YA lit category due to the ages of its female protagonists and the occasional teenage-girl-fantasy descriptions of the impossibly handsome Julian, Caraval is a far more sophisticated option than the average YA gothic romance. Thankfully, both vampires and werewolves are absent from the world of Caraval, and the magic of the story was both minimal and creative. Scarlett, the overly-cautious heroine, is given a magical gown that reinvents itself every day, and her hotel room expands into a suite, but mostly the significant magic is saved for the surprise ending.

Vaguely reminiscent of The Hunger Games and The Night Circus, Caraval is a massive game that is held by invitation only on a magical isle. The Caravel game is unique, however: it’s something like an enormous magical dinner theater in which the players are enveloped for several days. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how it plays with reality. What is real? What is merely part of the game? Whom can you trust? What are the consequences for choosing the wrong door, failing to be home before sunrise, or trusting your senses instead of the game clues? Scarlett and her sister Donatella are whisked away from their abusive father by a handsome sailor and brought to the island where Caravel takes place, but when Scarlett awakens on a raft near the island, she finds that Tella has been kidnapped and it is up to Scarlett to rescue her, with the no-so-convenient aid of the handsome sailor Julien.

The world of Caraval enchants and delights, but not quite in a Harry Potter sort of way: a carousel of roses spins faster and faster when the carousel-master sings songs, otherworldly pastries are available on street corners, and the past and future appear on the pages in a book of paintings, but there are dark edges to the magic. A dress in a shop costs a few days of Scarlett’s life, but (mild spoiler warning) life days can be exchanged in a manner almost reminiscent of the video game life-trading in the 2017 version of Jumanji. The dark elements in the book involve abuse, dismemberment, and murder, but I think that on average nothing is so graphic that it would sicken sensitive readers. The overly-cautious heroine from an abusive family endures some harrowing experiences, but perseveres with courage and determination. She is, in fact, one of my favorite literary females of all time, and one of my favorite things about the novel. In my opinion, it’s extremely difficult to write a good action novel heroine. Katniss was too much of a tomboy for my taste, as was Tris from Divergent. Meaning no disrespect to Stephanie Meyer, who has made infinitely more money than I have as a writer, Bella from Twilight was just boring. But Scarlett could be me. That, of course, is why I connect with her character so strongly, but more than that, I think she’s a finely-drawn portrait of an older sister who has endured far more than she should have had to in her young life and as a result has developed some particular anxieties about her sister and getting into trouble. For comparison, I enjoyed this book more than The Night Circus, although that novel had more literary polish. I never really connected with any of The Night Circus characters, and the plot of that novel, in my opinion, was not as interesting as that of Caraval.

There are two major difficulties I had with this book that prevented me from giving it five stars. The first is the ending, which uses magic to cheat fate in a happy but rather predictable way. That’s not horrible, but it’s not entirely great, either. Far more serious, though, is the fact that the hero of this novel, like the Beast from the Disney story, is a scary manipulator who turns out (spoiler warning) to have a heart of gold in the end. Or, in this case, whose heart seems to be turning into gold by the end. The problem I have with this is that I married one of these guys—a lying manipulator—and I thought it would be ok because I love fairy tales like this one and he, too, seemed to have a heart of gold beneath the grime. But in real life, unfortunately, lying manipulators tend to be just that, and they (usually?) don’t improve if you just give them love. In fact, in real life, such people often to take even further advantage of you if they think that you’ll just react by trying harder to love them. So in real life, naïve girls like Scarlett and I should stay very far away from guys like Julien. That being said, as long as the reader is well aware of this truth (real life bad boys generally can’t and shouldn’t be trusted) , the novel is highly entertaining and even deeply meaningful, as Scarlett tries desperately to break free from the abuse of her childhood, find her true nature, and rescue her sister.

What would Keats and Aristotle say? Great beauty of characters and plot. Some rather silly teenage swoon moments that mar the canvas a little, and one significant disturbing element plus the predictable ending, so pretty good for beauty and ok for truth as far as a YA novel is likely to go. With caveats, highly recommended.