From the Bookshelf of Reading Until Infinity …

It’s time for another Recommendation Swap review! For those of you who aren’t familiar, I belong to a Goodreads group that partakes in Recommendation Swaps every 3 months. The point of these swaps is to get randomly paired with another member (hopefully someone you don’t know) and then you each recommend a book that you’ve read and hope the other person will enjoy. The risk you’re taking is that you could be paired with someone who reads very different genres but most of us

It’s time for another Recommendation Swap review! For those of you who aren’t familiar, I belong to a Goodreads group that partakes in Recommendation Swaps every 3 months. The point of these swaps is to get randomly paired with another member (hopefully someone you don’t know) and then you each recommend a book that you’ve read and hope the other person will enjoy. The risk you’re taking is that you could be paired with someone who reads very different genres but most of us look at our partners TBR list so it usually works out! This time I was paired with another fabulous partner. We seemed to both like a lot of different genres which made it a lot of fun to pick a book for the other to read. My partner recommended The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern which has been on my TBR list forever! I was thrilled that she chose this one for me as I’ve heard nothing but great things and October seemed like the best time to read a book about a magical circus :)

Despite all the great things I’d heard and it having been released several years ago, I actually knew very little about the plot. This allowed me to go into The Night Circus with very little expectations which is the best way to start reading a book. It didn’t take long for me to become completely immersed within this magical world as the first chapters completely hooked me and reeled me in. The story takes place in the beginning of the 20th century and follows the lives of two very different illusionists, Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair. Each is being trained by master magicians, Celia by her father and Marco by a mysterious man who rescued him from an orphanage. They both know that one day their skills will be put to the ultimate test and they’ll square off to compete against each other but neither of them knows what they’re really playing for.

I really loved these beginning chapters where we see Celia and Marco grow up in such different environments and honing their skills with such different results, I found it fascinating and heart-wrenching. Soon, a unique and eccentric team of people come together to create and build Le Cirque de Reves, a black-and-white themed circus full of acrobats, illusionists, fortune tellers, clockwork pieces and strange exhibitions that dare to defy imagination. Within the walls of Le Cirque de Reves Celia and Marco’s competition begins; they’ve trained all their lives but what happens when they not only discover the end-game but also fall in love?

Erin Morgenstern’s writing style is fresh and unique and her world building and characters are complex and fully developed. She has created a tale full of intriguing fantasy and fascinating characters that all come together under the black-and-white striped tents each night. Her descriptions of the circus itself are really the highlight of this book and it becomes its own character which I fell in love with! There were just a few instances where I wished Morgenstern would have gone a little darker with her storyline but this was just my opinion as I like darker stories. The Night Circus is a book I would have loved to read with my book club and I would highly recommend this to all readers!This review was originally posted on My So-Called Book Reviews