cool potential, I mean come on, a magical amazing carnival that's beautiful and world renowned?? I was really expecting an amazing atmospheric book that was playful and childlike, and it fell so flat.

 

Everything contradicts each other, literally nothing about the carnival was concrete and it did not feel magical at all. It wasn't even a carnival?? More like a magical fair. The setting descriptions said a whole lot of nothing and delivered nothing. 

 

THE CHARACTERS 

 

Ok, even if I can not say for a fact that they are the worst characters I have ever read about, it was pretty damn close. 

Scarlette is so unbelievably boring and contradictory. She plays the role of a worried and protective older sister which is not what she is at all. She is so hypocritical, constantly shitting on her sister for falling in love too quick and being reckless when she was literally about to marry a man she had never met that her ABUSIVE FATHER set her up with and she just believes it will solve all of there problems because he seems nice in some letters?? She is incredibly controlling of her sister under the guise of her being protective and it's so infuriating. 

 

Julian, the love interest, was just a big blob of nothing. That's really all I can say about him. You do not really see any actual connection between them, there is really no romantic spark that you would want out of this book. By the end of the book I guess I could figure out his motives for everything he's done, but even then the fact that Stella would even start to trust him let alone love him is actually laughable. 

 

And last but not least, the real actual devil, TELLA. Words cannot describe how horrible this character is. In the spirit of no spoilers I will not go into detail, but she is the worst villain in the book by far, second if not to their father. We are told throughout the entire story that Scarlette loves Tella more than anyone, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. She is manipulative, selfish and just straight up stupid. She puts her needs in front of everyone else's, putting Scarlette through literally hell for a plan that she LOOSELY knew the rules to. She trusted someone that we are blatantly told through the entire story should not be trusted and in turn purposefully put everyone around her through the worst trauma possible. 

 

And MAYBE, just MAYBE that could have been made up for, because at the end of the day she was doing what she believed to be necessary. However, she was not apologetic or sympathetic even a little bit towards her own sister who went through hell and back for her lies. 

 

I can understand what the author was trying to do, and I know that the reader was supposed to be confused throughout the story, but this book crossed the line with it. There was absolutely nothing concrete to grasp on to so the world just crumbled. Nothing was explained, even the most simple stuff. I could not tell you the kingdom system or the magic system with a gun to my head. Also what you want from a good plot twist is for stuff to neatly click together in your head right? Nope that never once happened, everything just brought up a million more questions.