The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern ****/5

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. (Goodreads)

I just finished reading this amazing book and I feel lost. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as I wanted to, but this was such an amazing journey and although i'm inclined to give 3 stars as, i didn't exactly enjoy it, for me this would still be a 4 star and more or less a 5 star read simply because of the imagination. The author created a breathtaking and enchanting piece that is filled with immense imagination carefully woven into one cloth. Hats off to Erin Morgenstern for creating a night circus that would continue to live forever somewhere inside your heart, no matter how long you have finished reading the novel.

When I began the novel I only saw the circus as the venue of the competition between Marco and Celia. But honestly, that is nowhere correct. The center piece of the Night Circus was never about Marco and Celia, or their competition or their love story. It was about the circus itself. The circus is not a mere venue but it is the story itself. The competition can be considered as a mere backdrop of the circus, because even after the competition ends, the circus is still alive.

The imagination that is created in the entire novel is simply mind blowing and even I struggled some parts just to imagine what was the writer describing about and in which part of the circus that it was!!

The level of imagination in this novel is just breathtaking!!!!!!

The writing is simply beautiful is all I can say.

Although Marco and Celia become lovers and kind of get their happily ever after, at least as ghosts as both of them is still alive inside the circus, for me I expected more. Like i can't really say they are enemies to lovers considering they didn't know each other at all but more like strangers and then colleagues to lovers. But, I constantly wanted something more of them because at first I thought it was about them and their competition. Only after finally finishing the novel I get that, Marco and Celia are the ones that created the circus. The circus was created for them and for them to compete. They gave life to the night circus and it wasn't about their story at all. The whole novel is about the night circus, and Marco and Celia's story is a part of it because their competition is the reason why the circus was created. I do have to say, I kind of wished to read more about their love story as well as about their competition because while reading, I just didn't get the feeling that I was reading about a competition between two people.

I wished to read more of their story than about the circus and how Bailey would

continue the circus and about the relationship between Poppet and Bailey. Although they were side characters, Tsukiko, Isobel, Bailey, Poppet and Widget left a strong impression on me.

I didn't find anything in the novel that I want to highlight, because the majority of the novel describes the circus and it parts and what the performers are doing but the Part V of the novel, specifically the conversation between the Grey Suit and Widge is something that I want to highlight.

For me when Widge starts the story as "the circus arrives without warning" at the end of the novel, when the grey suit man wanted to hear a story, I felt like it was actually the beginning of the Night Circus. The entire novel was a story told by Widget. It was him who told us the story about the night circus, because the novel starts with the exact same quotation!!!

If there's one thing I would like more in this book at the ending, was what happened to Marco and Celia, how their story ends, and what's going on with Barris, Laine (can't remember the spellings), Tsukiko and Isobel because at the end there's nothing about them. The only mention of the main couple is that they exist within the circus and that they're the circus. Although, it was a good read, I kept putting off this novel and there were countless times i wanted to DNF the book, but i'm glad I didn't. This was a joyful ride that I actually find lacking in some ways but overall I can't say I hated it. The only thing that mainly saved this novel for me is the writer's magnificent imagination and my curiosity as to what will happen to the circus and to Marco and Celia.

I would still recommend this to everyone but read at your own risk, because this is either likable or unlikeable depending on your preference and don't expect a mind blowing story either and keep in mind that, the story is mainly about the Night Circus, just as the title says.