Caraval by Stephanie Garber (2017)

Sisters Scarlett and Tella live in constant fear of their father, who is the governor of the island they live on. From emotional trauma to physical abuse, Scarlett and Tella has lived it all. Now, Scarlett thinks she finally has the solution to get herself and Tella off the island: by marrying the secretive duke that’s been sending her love letters. However, a week before her wedding, she gets the most mysterious letter and it’s not from her fiance. It’s from Legend, the leader of Caraval, a moving city that is accessible by invitation only. For years, Scarlett and Tella have been asking for an invitation and now they have one. Caraval has always been rumored for its magical qualities, but to what extent, no one knows. When Scarlett and Tella enter Caraval, the unknowingly become part of a tricky game and the must win because the consequence could be deadly.  

Ever since its release in January, Caraval by Stephanie Garber has been everywhere in the book community. Recently, I’ve seen a rise of books about carnivals and festivals and I’ve been enjoying them so far with my favorite being Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody. I also decided to pick up Caraval as a Halloween read for this month. After reading it, this book definitely fit the Halloween spirit but I was still not a fan of it.

I think one of the biggest things that kept me from enjoying this book was the characters. They were just so generic. For the first thirty pages or so I couldn’t even tell Scarlett from Tella because they acted so alike even though they’re supposed to be polar opposites. Then, even when I could tell them apart, they simply weren’t interesting. There was nothing unique about Scarlett, who is the focus of the book. The biggest thing I remember about her was that she had brown hair. When characters aren’t interesting, readers like me loose interest in what happens to the characters. Therefore, even when they were in life-or-death situations, I didn’t care what happened and thus the whole suspense and drama of the book was lost on me.

There was also some pretty weird romances going on. The first romance that went on was between Tella, Scarlett, and this boy named Julian. So the book starts off with Tella and Julian literally being caught  together. Then, Julian goes into Caraval with Scarlett and start having feelings for each other (I guess). However, I didn’t pick up on those feelings between Scarlett and Julian because I thought he was still with Tella and was really confused when Scarlett and Julian started making out. Also, this guy Legend basically hooks up with almost every significant woman in this book and all the relationships end really darkly.

A huge concept in this book is that nothing should be taken at face value and everything has the possibility of being an illusion. And, for the most part, the book does follow that concept. However, that doesn’t mean the concept was well executed. Yes, the book has a lot of magical elements that are unexplainable and that’s expected with a story that takes place in a carnival since that’s kind of the whole point of a carnival. Yet, there were some things that happened that just didn’t add up. There are also about a million storylines in the book and none of them seemed to connect for me. Still, I tried to have faith in this book, hoping that at the end there would be some kind of explanation to everything. Nope. Apparently all these ridiculous things are going to happen and I’m just supposed to go with it.

When I finished this book, I still remember enjoying it to an extent. I think I really enjoyed the aesthetics and feel overall of this book. It was a very fantastical, autumn, Halloween type book. Nevertheless, this book didn’t live up to the hype for me.

3 Stars