pageprincess 's review for:

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

1.0

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This was the most convoluted mess of a book I have ever suffered through, and a bitter disappoint from author Erin Morgenstern, whose first novel, The Night Circus, is still one of my favorites. I can still feel and enjoy the aesthetic of that book, remember the connection and joy I felt to the central characters, almost smelling and tasting the world she created. Truly, I came away from The Starless Sea still having no idea what happened, no connection to the characters because I spent the entire reading experience too disoriented to be able to care. I almost DNF'd about one third of the way in, and then again halfway through. But I remembered a few points of confusion toward the beginning of The Night Circus and thought surely, Morgenstern would pull this all together in a beautiful tapestry of story and magical aesthetic. NOPE. I powered through the last half and breathed such a sigh of relief when it was finally over. It felt like wandering through multiple first drafts of several half-baked narratives, with no framework solid enough to even entertain the ideas she might have wanted to propose. I was so excited to read this, and what a miserable crash it turned out to be.