Church of Marvels

Sweeping, intricate, crowing spectacle

There's no lack of things to love here, but best of all is the depiction of the world of the earliest 1900s. This book's most enduring character is the places of that time. It's literary and lyrical with many surprises along the way.

At about 10 pages before the epilogue, I realized that not everything was going to be explained and I got really excited. We aren't going to know who fathered Bella's baby, and we aren't going to know how the fire started in the theater, and that's great because it's not important to know, and it's not real to know. There are all sorts of things that happen in life that hugely change us but we have no idea what was behind them, and it's still interesting how things play out. Allowing the reader to speculate, or to not speculate and to simply accept them as things that happened “before” - that felt really fresh and interesting and exciting.

And then the epilogue explained who fathered Bella's baby, how the fire started, and threw in some last minute curves about the twins' mom not being their mom.

If you only read one book in 2016, this should be it.

READ IT.

4.5 // I didn't really know what to expect going into this book, but it was lovely! Loved the setting (1895, New York), the characters (favourite: Odile + Mrs. Bloodworth for some reasons) and the creepy air of mystery (that asylum, man. Made me so angry I wanted to beat the ‘nurses'). I couldn't put it down. It was a great October read. I definitely want to buy this book and reread it at some point in my life.

Recommended for fans of Geek Love and Lauren Groff. Beautiful, nauseating, heartbreaking.