AUTHOR: Amanda Foody
CATEGORY: YA
PUBLISHED: July 25th, 2017
GENRE: Fantasy
PREMISE: A girl who creates illusions realizes someone is going around and murdering her illusions...which shouldn't be possible because the illusions aren't real...
MY REVIEW: You guys remember Caraval, right? Carnival book out in January that everyone and their mother kept insisting was super amazing? Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Caraval. I definitely think it's one of the better YA fantasy debuts this year. But in my personal opinion...this book is ten times better if you want more of that fantasy set in a circus thing.
The problem I had with Caraval is that ultimately...it was a pretty predictable YA fantasy. Everything went pretty much how I expected it too and the author just played it really safe. This book did not play it safe. There's representation for one (not just token characters either!), the romance is better handled, the story is better handled, there's more interesting twists...everything was just better.
I tend to not like comparing books, I think it's horribly unfair to the books in question to judge it based on what another book did....but in this case I couldn't help myself because it was very much the same sort of idea: fantasy set in a traveling circus with a quest of sorts going on. Each went about it very differently, but as far as I'm concerned...this book did it better. Again, not saying Caraval is bad. I still recommend it...I just think it played it very safe and this book just emphasizes how safe that book was. This is one of my favorites this year and I can't wait to see what the author has in store for us next.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of Caraval (who liked it but wanted more), carniepunk fans, murder mystery fans
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five traveling magic circuses
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