Off the Books discussion

This thread is for discussions about our February book, Caraval by Stephanie Garber! Did you love it? Did you hate it? Are you planning on sticking around for the sequel?

Feel free to write a full review or just drop a couple of lines. Please remember that your feedback is important!

I'd love to see what other people thought of this before I comment!
I wonder if I'm being too nit-picky, but these abusive father books really get me stressing the details!

OK *cracks knuckles*
Can't wait.

So like, this book.
I'm actually like REALLY freaking confused as to why so many people loved this?
I mean, as a debut author, maybe the reliance on tropes and cliches is forgivable, but not for something getting as much hype as this book. We have the wild younger sister and the up-tight older sister who does everything for her since mom died. Hello Vanishing Girls and like, every movie ever.
We have "good-girl Stacey" who finds herself charmed and attracted to Bucky the mysterious ass-hole male with a secret.
And I don't know how many books in a row I've read that have a "he/she's dead--oh, but wait, nope" moment.
Like, it literally has no impact now when a character dies.
And especially not these characters.

I feel like everything that happened in this book only happen because the author forced it to, because there were just too many damn variables. Too many ways that this could have gone horribly wrong that just didn't happen.

And what was Scarlett supposed to have learned through all this?
Don't trust anyone even your sister? Even yourself?
Forgive a guy for lying consistently to you because he's pretty and not as bad as your dad?
I hated Tella, I hated Scarlett, I didn't trust Julian for one heart beat the whole way through and yet these are the people we're routing for?
The best character was probably the freaking crazy unicycle girl because she had cool pants.

And *cringe* the forced sexual tension moments felt like they were cooked up in the mind of a 14 year old Christian School girl.
Like, Oh, our bodies are touching because the room is shrinking?
He had to rip my dress off because I was drowning?
Yeugh.
The more I think about this book, the more I don't like it.

Yeah I didn't love this book either. I think I might have if I'd read it when I was younger but now I don't really have the patience for the kind of relationship that happens between Scarlett and Julien - honestly my ideal ending would be if she had just left him and found freedom or whatever on her own.

I also wish the author had found another way for Scarlett to find out the truth of what had happened during the game without her sister having to spell out most of it for her. Just having the two characters talking wasn't the most interesting way of finding everything out, for me at least.

On the other hand I loved the world of Caraval but I wish that had been expanded on and fleshed out a little more. The idea of trading secrets and nightmares and fears and desires for things was really interesting but I felt like with the amount of warnings Scarlett got about giving her secrets away there should have been more of a pay off, unless I'm totally missing something?

I totally agree!
The ending was not only dull, but really kind of patronizing.
It painted Tella in this all-knowing light and made Scarlett look even more useless than she had for the majority of the book. She went through the harrowing journey, learned things about herself and the world and blah blah blah, only to find that it was still all controlled by someone else. Her whole life had been dictated by her father, and when she finally finds her own feet, they're swept out from under her by her sister!

And that's so true! The consequences weren't as severe as they should have been.
I would like liked to see like, a dark underbelly. If secrets are used as currency, then there would always be the greedy who want more, which could so easily lead to people committing worse and worse crimes, just to have more secrets to spend when they've used all the ones they have.
I'd read a book about THAT.

I'm hoping in the second book she leaves Julian and does get to be free and on her own.

Anna wrote: "I totally agree!
The ending was not only dull, but really kind of patronizing.
It painted Tella in this all-knowing light and made Scarlett look even more useless than she had for the majority of t..."

Oh my god exactly! Is anything Scarlett does her own free choice? How do you even deal with that, with making some incredible sacrifices to save your sister, with seeing people die right in front of you only to find out most of it wasn't even real?

I get a terrible feeling that the second book is going to focus on Donatella and if Scarlett is in it at all she'll be a bit player and still with Julien. Just because of the way the last chapter ends with "she felt the story could have ended there" and then the epilogue is all Tella.

I am sort of interested to find out what deal Tella made with Legend though.

Also how lazy was it that Legend's alias DeEngl is an anagram of his own name like come on...

Yes!! And how to you ever recover trust after something like that?
It would be almost impossible to ever truly trust her sister again, let alone Julian, who is nothing other than a good-looking stranger to her! No way could you look past that!

Yeah, that's a good point... Well I hated Tella, so if that's the case, the sequel will probably score even lower in my book then!

I did not even notice that.... but that is so incredibly cliche!
Oh man! I feel like a real moron!
I was basically skimming the book by that point but still! XD

I only noticed it because I feel like I read a ton of books with that same plot device when I was a kid.