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A review by romantasyandtea
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
4.0
Wow, this book was a rollercoaster. There's so much to get into, so I'll just start. This review is non-spoiler, but if you've read the book, then you'll know what I'm talking about.
First, I should tell you that if you think you know ANYTHING about what's going to happen in this book - you don't.
I was so sure that I was going to rate this 3 1/2 stars because I was SO SURE I'd guessed how everything was going to go. I knew who everyone was, who everyone was pretending to be, I knew the lie, the trick, the game - I WAS WRONG. I was SO PAINFULLY AND WONDERFULLY WRONG.
I never once saw the twists and turns coming, and they were RELENTLESS. Just when one secret was revealed, another HUGE secret showed itself in the next few pages. I was reading at one point in a public library, and I gasped SO LOUD, I think I startled some poor man. I thought if the book could just surprise me at least once, I would bump up the rating, and it definitely did that. It's intricate, it's well thought-out, it's so freaking clever - I loved it.
Second. The romance. Oh my gosh, I absolutely LOVED the romance. Julian and Scarlett are your classic hate-to-lovers couple. They don't even really like each other in the beginning, but Julian's so flirty and charming that neither Scarlett nor I had a hope of not falling in love with him.
Now, to mention the few things that bothered me; Scarlett's thing with color. Listen. I still have no idea how it works. I know there are people who can see color based on what they hear or feel, but if that's what Scarlett had, it was never explained. Some of the descriptions also bordered on ridiculous and made no sense, like how Scarlett at one point had "an emerald-green premonition."
I just kind of grimaced every time I read something like that because I'm not a huge fan of poetic language, I don't think it does that good a job of description or enticing emotion or sounding the least bit realistic, and there was just too much of it.
The other thing that started to bug me was Scarlett herself. Don't get me wrong, she's a good character and I really liked her (I definitely think she deserves better), but there was SO MUCH holding up the scene so that she could ask a million questions about Tella and where Tella could be and how they knew that Tella was even around wherever they were. I was surprised Julian didn't lose patience with her because I was definitely starting to. It doesn't last too long, but there was a point there in the beginning where it was really starting to get on my nerves, especially because they were on a deadline, and Scarlett just kept holding everything up.
Speaking of, we don't get to the blurb until 25% into the story. We don't find out that Tella had been taken as part of the challenge (which is the summary on the back, not a spoiler) until really late, and it gets a little boring because the author really tries to build up this mystery of "Where's Tella?" and "Where could Tella be?" and we all know she's been taken as part of the game. There's no suspense there, you're just trying to get into the beginning of the story already.
That said, I really enjoyed this book, I finished it really quickly, I was eager to find out more about Legend (hell, I'd take a sequel just about him), I loved the build up to him, I loved the reveal, I loved this book. Highly recommend, I will definitely be picking up more by this author because her stories are ones I would gladly get swept far away into.
First, I should tell you that if you think you know ANYTHING about what's going to happen in this book - you don't.
I was so sure that I was going to rate this 3 1/2 stars because I was SO SURE I'd guessed how everything was going to go. I knew who everyone was, who everyone was pretending to be, I knew the lie, the trick, the game - I WAS WRONG. I was SO PAINFULLY AND WONDERFULLY WRONG.
I never once saw the twists and turns coming, and they were RELENTLESS. Just when one secret was revealed, another HUGE secret showed itself in the next few pages. I was reading at one point in a public library, and I gasped SO LOUD, I think I startled some poor man. I thought if the book could just surprise me at least once, I would bump up the rating, and it definitely did that. It's intricate, it's well thought-out, it's so freaking clever - I loved it.
Second. The romance. Oh my gosh, I absolutely LOVED the romance. Julian and Scarlett are your classic hate-to-lovers couple. They don't even really like each other in the beginning, but Julian's so flirty and charming that neither Scarlett nor I had a hope of not falling in love with him.
Now, to mention the few things that bothered me; Scarlett's thing with color. Listen. I still have no idea how it works. I know there are people who can see color based on what they hear or feel, but if that's what Scarlett had, it was never explained. Some of the descriptions also bordered on ridiculous and made no sense, like how Scarlett at one point had "an emerald-green premonition."
I just kind of grimaced every time I read something like that because I'm not a huge fan of poetic language, I don't think it does that good a job of description or enticing emotion or sounding the least bit realistic, and there was just too much of it.
The other thing that started to bug me was Scarlett herself. Don't get me wrong, she's a good character and I really liked her (I definitely think she deserves better), but there was SO MUCH holding up the scene so that she could ask a million questions about Tella and where Tella could be and how they knew that Tella was even around wherever they were. I was surprised Julian didn't lose patience with her because I was definitely starting to. It doesn't last too long, but there was a point there in the beginning where it was really starting to get on my nerves, especially because they were on a deadline, and Scarlett just kept holding everything up.
Speaking of, we don't get to the blurb until 25% into the story. We don't find out that Tella had been taken as part of the challenge (which is the summary on the back, not a spoiler) until really late, and it gets a little boring because the author really tries to build up this mystery of "Where's Tella?" and "Where could Tella be?" and we all know she's been taken as part of the game. There's no suspense there, you're just trying to get into the beginning of the story already.
That said, I really enjoyed this book, I finished it really quickly, I was eager to find out more about Legend (hell, I'd take a sequel just about him), I loved the build up to him, I loved the reveal, I loved this book. Highly recommend, I will definitely be picking up more by this author because her stories are ones I would gladly get swept far away into.