The Night Circus

I'll be totally honest, when this book was picked for our book club to read back in July, I was a little skeptical. Sure, I have nothing against a good love story, but fantasy and some sort of magicians' battle? Meh. Not really up my alley. In fact, fantasy has never really been my thing (except for Harry Potter. I definitely got sucked into those). However, I ended up loving this book. It was so fascinating and captivating and most of the time I actually forgot I was reading a "fantasy" novel. The characters (even the ones with "magical" powers) are all humans (as opposed to centaurs or something), the story takes place in real locations (primarily London and the American Northeast), and even the whole premise of the "night circus" is something that could realistically exist without any magical enchantment.

Unfortunately, aside from saying that there is a love story, a night circus, and a "battle" between two magicians, it's really hard to say much else about the plot without giving anything away. However, I can say that the book is beautifully written; although I'm always wary of books being made into movies, I think this book would make a spectacular movie. The word choice was so vibrant and descriptive that at times I found I was actually playing the book in my head like a movie while I was reading (although I know the images I was creating in my head were certainly not doing justice to what the author was describing). Of course, we all agreed that it could not be a low-budget production, because then it definitely would be disappointing.

I think the only complaint people really had about this book was that a few of the girls missed that different chapters (within the same section) of the book were set in different years. The author did include this information in small text under the title of the chapter, but unless you knew to read it carefully, it was really easy to miss that the years were jumping around (especially because in one section of the book they jump back and forth between the same day, but different years). And since some of the girls were reading the book on their Kindles/iPads, it wasn't exactly easy to flip back a handful of pages to check the year given under the chapter title. Perhaps a nuisance, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, it's definitely not a reason to refrain from picking up the book (in fact, it was inspiring many of the girls to want to read the book again and pay closer attention to those--and other--details. A sentiment I definitely agree with).

Even if you think this book is a little "outside of the box" of what you usually read, I seriously recommend picking it up anyway. Give it a chance--you won't regret it!