A review by abigail_rebt
Caraval by Stephanie Garber

adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

To be honest, I was disappointed by this book. I think it had a more significant scope, and there were many times when they could have taken the story in a different and better direction. Even though I marked the book as medium-paced the romance and especially the relationship between the main two characters was way too quick. 

I mean if you are going to write a trilogy you don't want them to get together in the 1st book itself. She loves and trusts him but she's only known him for 5 days. Like girl what? And it was also kind of hard to keep up with. I mean it's one secret after another.
First, she thinks Julian is a legend, then learns that he's here to get revenge on Legend, then learns that there are more secrets, then learns that he is a Caraval performer and finally learns he's Legend's brother
Now I am all for rollercoasters but there's the limit. My second point for this opinion is that the ending was utter s*** tbh.
She was deceived by her sister, and I understand that her father is horrible but she had to go through all of that shit. And of course, she should feel weird for going back to Julian because after everything she went through with him to learn she was lied to. It was a dumb decision to make her forgive him so easily, not every book needs a happy ending. She should have left him then and continued this story later on.


Secondly, I think the author could have done so much with Legend's character. I don't like books that are afraid to kill off main characters,
But I loved the whole idea where Legend was this heartless maniac that killed Julian because it made him feel more like a larger than human character but they ruined that again in the ending.
Maybe they will continue that storyline or whatever in the following books.

In conclusion, the book needs work and was a kind of a disappointment. Especially the ending needs work and they could have gone in a better direction after the climax (the first appearance of Legend).

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