Caraval - Stephanie Garber [Review]

Title: Caraval

Author: Stephanie Garber

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Fiction, Romance

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Publishing date: January 31st 2017

Pages: 407

Rating

★★★★✩

Hello, today I’m reviewing a book that had so much hype even before its release, Caraval by Stephanie Garber.

Caraval follows the story of Scarlett Dragna, a girl that lives with her sister Donatella under the roof of their cruel father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks

her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

I was really excited about reading Caraval, I had heard several good things about it and it seemed really interesting… and I’m not disappointed at all.

I think that the most interesting thing about the book was the setting, Caraval per se. A mysterious game where fantasy and reality collide. The game takes place in an island, and during the whole time in the island the reader can feel this mysterious and magical vibe, it’s really hard to distinguish if it’s supposed to be an illusion or if it’s real.

Besides Scarlett, the characters are hard to decipher, sometimes they act in a way that makes you trust them and then their personality changes completely. Talking about the characters, they didn’t convince me at all. Scarlett is a weak protagonist that let everyone take decisions for her and drag her around. Donatella, Scarlett’s sister, was a really annoying character, even if she didn’t appear that much in the book, but was a key part of the story, I totally hated her. Julian is the male lead and romantic interest of Scarlett, he didn’t convince me neither, and their “romance” felt rushed and forced, and in the end things end awkwardly between them. The most interesting character is the mysterious Legend, it’s hard to know what are his intentions and if he’s bad or crazy.

The story is full of twists and turns that were really unexpected to me, so I couldn’t put the book down, I wanted to know what was happening and why. Whenever I thought I had figured out something, the situation changed and I was lost again.

The book is fast paced and this big mystery about Caraval makes the book interesting. The writing style has a lot of descriptions; some of them unnecessary and very strange, as if the author wanted to hit a certain goal of words, with pretty odd and sometimes absurd metaphors.

If you are looking for a mysterious read with some romance, interesting setting and an intriguing story full of illusions and magic, Caraval is totally for you.