Book Review: Caraval

I was a little confused with this book at first.

This is one of my daughter’s recommendations. Apparently, it’s one of her favorite series of all time. I honestly wasn’t convinced until the end. Now, I’m hooked, but it took me a while to get there.

The story is a bit like that old Michael Douglas movie The Game. Remember that one?

Well, in Stephanie Garber’s book, Caraval is a game very much like the one Michael Douglas “plays” in the movie. You get confused between what’s real and what isn’t.

The story follows two sisters who are abused by their father. Their mother runs away when they’re younger and their father becomes cruel (hitting then, killing their friends to show them they misbehaved). They live on an island where they can’t escape (if they try they get caught and they get punished by their father). Their only fantasy of an escape it to one day attend a game, Caraval, because once upon a time their grandmother played and she thinks it’s the best thing in the world.

Caraval is run by this man, Legend, who was bestowed with magic and immortality. No one knows his true identity and he lost the love of his life when his wish to become Legend became a reality.

With this premise, things begin to happen with no apparent explanation.

One sister disappears while the other tries to find her. The only way to find her is by playing the game. The rules aren’t really explained until the end, so it was a little hard for me to keep up except by accepting that things happened without an explanation.

During the ordeal, our main protagonist tried to find clues to find her sister. The clues aren’t very clear either. I have no idea how she suddenly discovered them. It’s all just… accept it and move on. This was my main problem with this book. Things just happened and I just had to keep reading even if nothing made sense. Things just magically fell into place.

And then there’s the ending.

Wow.

I really enjoyed that last part. I enjoyed it enough to want to continue reading the next book. The rules are explained at last and a few of the things that happened in the book made sense (others didn’t, so I just went with it).

I still give it five stars because it kept me hooked and the ending was so worthwhile.

Happy reading!
cheers!

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