A review by rensreading
Caraval by Stephanie Garber

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

i thought all might have been lost on the last day of caraval but i really should have known better.

oh, there were so many twists and turns! some i could see coming and others were a huge surprise. still, i'm left with a lot of questions left unanswered but i think that might be cleared up when i read the sequel.

sometimes, scarlett annoyed me due to how defenseless and naive she thought her sister donatella to be. it felt more like her projecting since she's the eldest and has had to protect her sister from their abusive father since their mother abandoned them. i feel for her but at the same time, it felt a little repetitive since that seemed to be her main concern with her sister until the history between her grandma and legend was revealed. i didn't like donatella though. i think in the epilogue we're
supposed to feel sorry for her but i just felt annoyed.
she kidnapped her own sister, staged her own fake kidnap, gaslit her sister into thinking she had gone insane, died then came back to life because her sister loved her so much and we're supposed to feel sorry for her because she didn't end up getting a love story like scarlett? that's some manipulative shit right there and i'm not down with it. it
really pissed me off actually.
i know the sequel is meant to be from her point of view so i think ill hold off on reading it for now.

it took me a while to realize julian was going to be the love interest, but once i did i was all for it. i could tell he had a lot more secrets than he was hinting at yet my mind ran wild with possibilities after scarlett
traded those 2 days of her life away
. i loved the tender moment they had when she did that though since it pushed julian enough to show his true feelings by
giving her one day of his life so they only had to waste one day at caraval instead of two. and gods, when he died, my heart broke. i knew he was going to betray her in some way, but by taking that knife to his face for her sake, i knew his feelings were real too. i was devastated by his last words and how she begged him to keep fighting. a death scene has not spoken to me so much in such a long time so i did get a little teary- eyed. AND THEN HE CAME BACK!
i loved him so much as a character and i'm happy they got a promise of a happy ending. i hope to see more of him, especially, in the sequel.

4.5 stars from me (:
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