Book Review - Caraval

That cover is gorgeous, no?  The picture really doesn't do it justice.  It's so shiny and sparkly!  I'm glad I've got the book now because I understand it's already becoming a movie and I hate movie covers.

Currently drinking: a gingered dark chocolate mocha because something dark and complicated and spicy really goes well with this book.  You can find my recipe for gingered dark chocolate syrup in a recent post here.

Star Rating: 3/5
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Buy the book: Amazon

If you're at all involved in the Bookstagram or Booklr community, you've heard of this book.  It's everywhere right now!  I'm on a self-imposed book buying ban at the moment, but I took part in a GoodReads read-along, soooooo LOOPHOLE!  XD

First, what I liked about it: the writing is gorgeous!  As someone who adores but really struggles with writing vivid descriptions, this book was like a drug.  I could tell as I worked on my own writing I was being more aware of small details.  Additionally, the main character Scarlet has something about her that sounds a bit like some form of synesthesia.  In her case, she sees colors when she feels strong emotions, and that was really interesting to me.  Fear was often shades of yellow, for instance.  It was something that gave the story a unique twist and served a practical purpose once.  That's probably the strongest part of the book, to me.  The story too, IMHO, was also pretty good...until the end.  More on that later.  Pieces were assembled well for the first 90% of the book.  Things that were mentioned in passing earlier came back up later, and there was a good twist at the end.

As for the not-so-great-stuff...the ending.  As this is a spoiler free review, I can't really say why I felt this way.  Instead, let me just say that...
-1) I thought it was too easy.
-2) I was so angry with the main character, due to some of my own personality traits, at the end because I thought she made a really stupid move.
-3) I was even angrier with one of the secondary characters.  I wanted to punch that character...a lot.
-4) The character motivations didn't really work for me.

Even saying all of that, I will probably read the next one.  I do want to know what happens (though I am really, really hoping it ends with the second book).  And, despite how I felt about the ending, I did enjoy the process of reading this book.  Who knows, maybe the next one will redeem the characters for me a bit.

Have you read the book?  If you have, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below.  Thanks for reading!