⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 3 stars
The Night Circus is a fantasy book about a circus that arrived without any warning or announcement. Within the circus are two magicians who are competing against each other.

The book has been on my shelves for a while and it really was time to finally read it. I felt like I was in the right mood for it, so I picked it up and started reading it.

One of the first things I noticed about the book was the whimsical way it was written. It really made me want to go visit the night circus! It made me wish magic was real. The ambiance and atmosphere of the book were just amazing.

While the book was beautifully written, I had a hard time navigating it. There were a lot of different characters and I really had to write the names and who they were down to remember who I was reading about sometimes. The book also isn’t written chronologically. The time and date at the beginning of the chapters help, but it made navigating everything harder for me. I can’t really remember ever having read a book that isn’t written chronologically, so it was a ‘new’ way of writing for me that I wasn’t accustomed to. The way the places, times and thus characters shifted was hard to follow for me. It did become easier around one third in.

I was also a bit confused by the plot. I understood that a competition was happening, but didn’t understand how some of the time stamps or some characters played a role in it. Of course, all of it became clear at the end of the book, but it didn’t take away the confusion at the beginning. It was also really slow-paced, so that did help getting a better grip on everything eventually.

The characters were really interesting and very different. The two main characters, Celia and Marco, are both powerful magicians, but somehow it didn’t really feel like that. They did amazing stuff in the circus, but the slow plot didn’t always make it seem that way. I was more intrigued by the circus itself and the performers than the two main characters. I also really liked the twins and wanted to know more about them than the competition.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the romance. It felt underdeveloped for some reason. Maybe the lack of urgency throughout the whole book, due to the slow pacing, made the romance feel sort of rushed and out of place with the rest of the book. The romance also mostly seemed to develop through dialogue instead of through actions.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and feel like I’ll learn new things or pick up other parts of the book if I’d read it again. It really adds to the atmosphere the whole book carries.