Author: Stephanie Garber
Series: Caraval
Remember it’s all a game. What happens beyond this gate may frighten or excite you, but don’t let it trick you
Review:
I both loved this book and found it incredibly annoying. You start off with sisters Tella and Scarlet who live on the conquered isle of Trisda. Who has it been conquered by? It doesn’t say. Does this have any impact on the residents? I honestly couldn’t tell. It is briefly glossed over but I feel like this is one of many things that could have been expanded on to give more depth to the world and therefore story.
Well Tella and Scarlet live with their abusive father and one day they receive tickets to Caraval which essentially is this massive, magical, performance, scavenger hunt type event in which you usually have to find some kind of item by the end and if you win there is some kind of prize. So they run away from home and go, but when they get there Tella disappears and it turns out that she is what people have to find this year.
I really enjoyed the plot of the story, I thought it was incredibly captivating and I could not put it down, I managed to get through the whole book in one day. However there were some aspects of it that were mildly irritating. Some of the events that happened didn’t seem to actually have any importance to the overall plot, they were interesting don’t get me wrong, however I couldn’t see how they actually fit in. Also the ending really annoyed me, it essentially undid all the good aspects of the world building and backstories and the relationships that the main characters developed. When I first finished it I was a little disappointed but after a couple of hours I found myself with the urge to read it again as the rest of the plot was very well thought out and just captivating. Overall it was just a very cool idea and concept that in general was excecated very well.
The character development was amazing. All the characters were well fleshed out, in particular I loved the development that Scarlet went through, she really grew and changed over the course of the book. I found Tella quite annoying there were times when she made me think “God how stupid and selfish can one character be”. But by the end I didn’t fully like her but I didn’t have any strong negative feelings towards her.
All in all I loved this book but it could have been improved by some minor plot changes, a better ending and a lot more world building.
Izzy the Bookworm 