Caraval did not live up to the expectations set by the hype. While the story was mostly entertaining as a whole. there were too many things done wrong for me to enjoy it.

I honestly had problems with all of the characters. Scarlet was so bloody naive! She was reckless and impulsive, and it was just so infuriating, especially because she had not learnt her lesson by the end of the book.. For someone who was supposedly the more reserved, rule-following sibling, she did not act like it. She made so many stupid decisions, like:

refusing to stay in Julian’s room. Sharing a bed with someone is not an inherently sexual act and implying so just shows her true maturity levels. I also am confused how the heck sharing a bed with Julian could possibly be worse than sleeping in a strange man’s room?

. Scarlet’s choices were enough to make growl with frustration and in all honesty, I just did not like her. Julian also had no personality. His characterisation relied too heavily on predictable and overused character archetypes to be worthwhile and I did not understand what he saw in Scarlet. Tella was just… a mess. She was also completely unlikeable and so bloody selfish. I never, not even for a second, cared about her fate and that annoyed me so much. Her and Scarlet’s relationship was meant to be central to the book but their entire relationship was so underdeveloped it made me want to cry.

Scarlet and Julian’s relationship was another case of instalove. There is no other way of putting it. Despite the fact that Julian helped abduct Scarlet, their romantic tension is obvious from the get-go and that put me in a sour mood. We know how central Scarlet and Tella’s relationship is meant to be to the story - the whole book is pitched around sisterly bonds - so to have this over-the-top and unnecessary romance replace it irked me. This was especially irritating because Scarlett mocked Tella for being immature about her relationships and scoffed at the idea of Tella falling in love with men so quickly… yet she claims to have fallen in love with someone she just met a couple of days ago? I call bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If that really was the case, I am pretty sure that makes Scarlet one hell of an awful sister! Who puts their affections for a man they have only known for four or so days before their sister who they have loved and protected their whole life? No one. No one does that.

I do think that the premise was fantastic. I loved the idea of a circus performance where you are not sure what is real and what is an illusion but I was disappointed with the setting. This book did almost capture the magical atmosphere of Caraval but this book was pitched as a magical circus, not a magical town, and the only remotely circus-like aspect of Caraval was Nigel’s fortune-telling tent. The marketing team did an abysmal job of pitching this book. The plotline also did not make sense to me. It took too many shortcuts and focused on the romance when it should have toned that subplot done. I also hated that aspects of the game were glossed over. We saw so little of the other competitors and bystanders and I don’t get why. It made the book seem even less like the circus performance promised. How are we meant to believe that this is a high-stakes game when we only see other competitors in one scene? It took the urgency away from Scarlet’s mission to find her sister. The whole plotline was poorly constructed and underwhelming.

Also, the ending:

I hate books that have fake deaths. I understand that we get attached to the characters and it can be painful when something happens to them (especially if that thing is them dying), but making it so that everyone is immune to death takes away all the suspense, all the desperation, from the story. I cannot get invested in the action anymore because I know no one would get seriously hurt… and where’s the fun in that? At least have Dante remain dead. We didn’t have personal attachments to him.

. I also just have too many unanswered questions.

I was also annoyed that:

We had no idea what was happening outside of Caraval. The general world-building was so lacking.
The writing tried so hard to be pretty and flowery and my God, did it fail. Scarlet had a weird habit of describing the taste of intangible phenomena. At one point, she woke to the taste of lies on her lips, another the taste of death was clogging up her throat or something. Julian tasted like midnight at another point. What the frick does midnight taste like? If you’d described his hair like that, I would know you were trying to say he had black hair in a fancy way, but I have no idea what midnight is meant to taste like!
Scarlet’s father was a flat, one-dimensional villain that was laughably underdeveloped.
Dante and the other secondary characters were also unmemorable. I really hope they don’t play a huge role in the second book because I cannot remember anything about them.

Overall?

Caraval was an overhyped release that could have been enjoyable if it didn’t try so hard to be something it wasn’t. The characters drove me insane and the romance had me sighing with frustration. The world-building and plotline were lacking, and the writing made me roll my eyes more times then I could count. Unfortunately, I just was not a fan.