ithlilian 's review for:

Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan

1.0

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So many things are wrong with Cirque du Freak. It's written in first person by a child. His age isn't given, but he acts like he is in elementary school. Every other sentence has an exclamation point and the most important thing to him is recess. He is extremely immature and doesn't think about the consequences of his actions. The main character asks his teacher about a "big" word, yet uses some words that don't appear to be in his vocabulary in the story. That's just a big pet peeve of mine. Second, as a horror novel, Cirque du Freak absolutely fails. There is nothing scary about anything in this book. I really can't get over (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) how the main character could pretty much kill his best friend and not feel bad about it or come clean with what he did.(END SPOILERS) I don't think there is anything about this novel that I liked at all. It's a quick read, but it's entirely too irritating to be worth it. I don't see how this merits a blurb by J.K. Rowling, or a movie. There are so many better YA novels out there.