Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

  • Source: This was a book club pick

  • My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (see my review on Goodreads)

Two confessions: 1) I am one of those people who will sometimes actively avoid a book because it’s gotten so much hype; 2) this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I just don’t really enjoy circus-themed anything. Thus, The Night Circus is one of those wildly popular books that wasn’t even on my TBR. Oof.

Cue the Universe forcing me to engage with something that I have outwardly professed is Not For Me™. ✌🏼 My witchy media club has assigned The Night Circus as our book of choice for June. And since I am a good student, I accepted the challenge and immediately checked it out from the library.

I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised to discover how much I enjoyed this book. If I had to go to a circus, it had better be like Le Cirque des Rêves because it’s the most interesting interpretation of a circus I’ve encountered (and it only happens at nighttime). The entire vision, construction, and experience of this circus was so complex and interesting and deliberate and magical. In fact, the entire BOOK felt this way: extremely well-thought-out, complex webs of relationships and challenges and creations and mysteries.

The writing is beautiful, and each character felt so rich and alive and real. It was easily to visualize the unusual, magical scenarios and feel like I was there in the story with the characters. I enjoyed watching how everything and everyone slowly coalesced and rubbed against each other and created these sparks. One thing that was a little tricky for me was keeping up with the timeline, because this story spans such a long time and jumps around in time quite a bit. I think I would have liked some sort of map or timeline visualization to accompany this story (or maybe I should have put one together for myself while I was reading?). I would absolutely LOVE to see this adapted into a TV series.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I’m glad that I took the opportunity to get over my resistance and see what all the fuss was about. Have you read The Night Circus? If not, then do it!

book reviewKelleyfiction