“Caraval” by Stephanie Garber review
Introduction
Caraval is a 2017 novel by Stephanie Garber and follows the story of Scarlett and her sister Donatella. The pair were raised by an abusive father on the Isle of Trisda. Scarlett has been writing letters to a man named Legend for years, hoping his Caraval will come to the Isle. She gave up after many years, and now, Legend has answered her letters, providing two tickets to this year’s Caraval. After Donatella disappears, her sister and a scoundrel named Julian follow the clues to finding Tella and winning Caraval. The prize for the winner is a magical wish, but with each clue the Caraval players and vendors create more obstacles for Scarlett in finding her sister. Ultimately, the heroine will need to discover her family’s secret history and escape her father once and for all, to save her sister and their lives.
No spoiler review
I enjoyed the book. Was not crazy about it, but it sucked me into the world. Caraval is such an interesting concept and one I haven’t seen before. I hoped it would be fleshed out a little bit more but the bits we got were enjoyable and exciting. The storyline was engaging but the part that fell short for me was the characters. Scarlett constantly made decisions that seemed stupid to me, so I spent a lot of the book judging her and struggling to root for her. Julian was fine, he gets better in the future books, or at least after Caraval is over. I do recommend reading it, but the only reason I finished it was because I listened to the audiobook. Garber’s writing felt quite lackluster for a lot of it, and I wouldn’t hope for a lot of improvement at least in this trilogy. (PS: I’m reading Once Upon a Broken Heart now, and it has gotten a lot better).
Scarlett
Honestly, I do not have a strong opinion of Scarlett other than that I found her quite bland. I understand her being fearful but at the same time, I wanted to scream at her to live a little. She came across as very prudish and kind of unlikeable many times, but ultimately her friendship with Julien pushed her out of her shell a bit. Overall the development was good but due to her making stupid decisions, it was hard for me to root for her or relate to the character at all (which should be easy since I am a woman in her 20s who has a sister).
Donnatella
Of course, she was only there at the end of the book, but I liked her a lot! I found her to be the more realistic, fun-loving counterpart to her stiff sister’s characterization. I loved the twist surrounding her at the end and how she outsmarted everyone. Even though she was absent for most of the book I think her character became almost a theme for the storyline to follow, as all of Scarlett’s actions were based on saving Tella.
Julien
My impression of Julien was quite skewed because the audiobook performer made Julien sound so un-sexy that it was blinding. The accent she put on for him ruined so many lines and I know I would have liked him a lot more if I just read the book. Unfortunately, the same performer did all three books so we have that to look forward to. Other than that he was likable enough, I found his motivations and intrigue interesting enough to keep going forward, and in the end, I was hoping for him to come back to life the same as I did Tella.
Plot
I liked how the Caraval was divided into days and I liked at the beginning how all the clues slowly led us through the storyline, but it seemed to fall apart a bit halfway through the book. I was vaguely interested, but I’ll be honest, I almost stopped reading at some point but the promise of the next installments being better kept me going. The characters and setting being interesting and unique definitely kept the plot moving along but I wished that the main love storyline had a bit more going for it, as it felt a little bit bland.
Overall thoughts
My main issue with this book all the way through was the writing. It felt very unfinished, unedited and written for a younger audience. But even then, not very good. I finished reading the trilogy and I can confirm it does improve but not as much as it needed to, and not quickly enough. “Legendary” was definitely better than Caraval with its story being more interesting, but the writing was still an issue. It seemed like in “Finale” Garber did not really know where to go with it and how to wrap things up, so things felt a bit random. But the writing did improve by then, so at least the characters weren’t as annoying. I finished reading this trilogy mainly because I really wanted to get to the “Once upon a broken heart” series with all the context. I loved Once upon a broken heart, but now the “Ballad of the never after” is causing me the same issues as “Finale” with it’s lack of direction and “Caraval”’s immature themes. So my main thoughts are: it gets better with time, but not much better.