Reviews with content warning for Cursing - The Night Circus

Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

9 reviews

ninahuynh's review against another edition

adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

If you enjoy multiple storylines and interconnected plots, this is the book for you. Every character has their own breath and life. The jumping in timeline is a bit confusing, moreso since I listened to it. That ending was not how I expected it to end.

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kcmg710's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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nicole12's review against another edition

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inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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laneys_library's review against another edition

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challenging inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

So so beautiful! I can’t even describe how this book makes me feel. I have the extreme desire to experience the circus for myself. Usually I don’t prefer slow paced books but I loved every second of this! The authors writing is so gorgeous I feel as if I’m there, at the magical night circus. This book is so mysterious, mystical, and surreal. I beg you to read it if you haven’t already!

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maeverose's review against another edition

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dark inspiring mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.25

This is a bit of an essay…
This review is for my first re read of this book, which I originally gave 4 or 5 stars (can’t remember)

!!!This will have spoilers so skip if you haven’t read the book!!!

TL;DR: It didn’t hold up. I feel very similarly as I did for the starless sea. I love the setting with my whole heart, the writing and the atmosphere. Bailey’s chapters remain my favorite. But I was incredibly disappointed with the romance and the way the plot played out.

The things I loved:

My favorite thing about this book is the circus itself. I wanna visit it so bad. Just the descriptions of the circus, the different foods, performances and tents. I need it to exist.

I also loved the atmospheric writing, the way she describes scents, sounds, etc makes it so immersive.

Bailey’s storyline is my favorite. I love his friendship with Poppet and Widget and his journey to joining the circus himself.

The things I didn’t like:

The main romance was so disappointing. For a book that’s marketed as a fantasy romance, I would’ve expected more of a focus on the romance. It’s not even a focus until the last third. They barely interact until then. For an opponents-to-lovers, I wanted tension between them before getting to the romance. What little tension there was came in too late and felt forced. It doesn’t have to be full-on enemies to lovers but it just doesn’t make sense to me that by the time they do finally get together, they get together with no hesitation, knowing they’re opponents. They shouldn’t have been that trusting of each other. I didn’t buy their love for each other. It was very instalove on Marco’s part, and instalove doesn’t work for me for multiple reasons. One being that it’s hard for me to buy his attraction to her when he doesn’t even know her. He fell for her years before they ever really spoke to each other, let alone got to know each other. I can’t buy that, personally. And from Celia’s perspective, she didn’t pay him any attention hardly until the end. It literally says in the book that to her he blended into the background before she found out he was her opponent. She didn’t care about him. It was also somewhat instalove for her after that point. Given that this book takes place over so many years, that would’ve suited a slow burn romance perfectly. Even though it takes years for them to get together, it’s not slow burn. The point of slow burn (imo) is the mutual tension and build up before they finally confess their feelings and get together. They need to interact.

Marco’s relationship with Isobel. He was kinda terrible to her. He fell for Celia the moment he saw her, but didn’t break up with Isobel until 15 years later… like yes Isobel could’ve taken the hint that he didn’t like her anymore but it was really sh*tty of him to not just tell her that it was over. He knew Isobel still loved him, or he wouldn’t have broken up with her at all. He just let that go on for 15 years…… another thing about their relationship that bothered me, is if you pay attention, towards the end Isobel says she was younger than Bailey when she met Marco. Bailey was 15 when Isobel met him, Marco was 19 when he met Isobel. So Isobel had to have been 14 at the oldest…. That makes me uncomfortable.

The competition. I liked that it wasn’t action heavy, but I felt like there was so little focus on the competition that it just felt a bit low stakes. Not even just that but it hardly felt like there was a competition at all.

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I think I’ll still read future books by Erin Morgenstern, because I love her ideas so much, but so far both her books have been disappointing for me. I wish she would work on creating more fleshed out characters and plots, then she could easily be a favorite author.

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