Lou

“The first book is bad, but the second book is SO GOOD,” they said. They lied.

While some of the technical issues of the first have improved, it's still not well written. Also I found myself actually saying, “Gross!” out loud at a lot of the romantic and sexual moments because the descriptions were so unappealing.

And I know it's to differentiate fairies from humans, but the use of “male” and “female” as nouns made me feel like I was being told a story by a Ferengi incel.

I was excited to read a horror novella steeped in Japanese folklore, but that's not what this is. The folklore is merely set dressing (literally!) for the petty squabbles of a group of characters you can't even love to hate.

At first, I expected the haunting to play off of the characters' animosity towards each other to escalate the horror, but they come into the story at each other's throats already. There's not much room for build up.

And that's where this book really fails: horror is all about the build up. But the haunting alternately jumps around in intensity and simmers on the back burner to make room for the sorts of interpersonal issues that would be forgotten in such life-or-death circumstances. And I couldn't help but laugh along with the ghost at that.

Delightful! Somehow not at all what I was expecting and exactly what I was expecting. It's short. Just read it. You'll see.

I'd love to read the book this was advertised as. While Bolin's stories about her life—dotted occasionally with stray observations about media, race, and gender—were just interesting enough to keep me reading, the actual meat of this book could really only fill a long essay.

Part 1: The Dead Girl Show almost lives up to the hype. The first 50 pages would have gotten 4 stars from me. Parts 2 and 3 stray away from what was advertised and become a memoir of Bolin's life in LA and her adolescence, which would have merited 3 stars. Part 4: A Sentimental Education was unfortunately difficult to get through, and ending on that disappointment soured the rest of the book for me. Hence 2 stars.

The Night Circus is a sluggish story about a circus... that happens to contain two magicians who, for much of the book, have no idea that they're competing or why. There is no “fierce competition” or “duel” and describing their feelings for each other as “deep, magical love” is only accurate in that magic is the only explanation for why either of them would be attracted to the other.

This book had a lot of problems, but the one that bothered me the most was the choice of the 3rd person omniscient narrator. The author tries to build tension by having Celia question Marco's motives, but the attempt falls flat when you remember that you've been privy to both their innermost thoughts throughout the whole book.

If you really like romantic-to-the-point-of-absurdity depictions of circuses, tension-less romance, and clocks, this one might be for you.