Night Circus / Erin Morgenstern 387 p. ALA Rusa Reading List - Best Adult Genre Fiction Award

“The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

But it is not open for business. Not just yet.”So the reader is pulled into the magical world of Le Cirque des Rêves. Set in the Victorian era, a love story emerges between two competitors in a game of illusions. Each is fabulous at creating magical images. The competition turns to collaboration as each builds on the other’s work—and the circus expands. Great delightful tents appear—an ice garden that never melts, a living carousel, as each seeks to pleasure the other. The wonderful spell-bounding concoctions of Celia and Marco grow and grow. But like a garden, need their attention to stay and bloom. The dark secret is not revealed to Marco or Celia that the game ends when only one person is left standing. What will happen to the two lovers?

Many other characters emerge—Bailey, a Massachusetts farm boy who chums with the clairvoyant twins, Frederick Thiessen, clock maker extraordinaire, and Chandresh Christophe Lêfevre, the organizer behind the circus.

Slowly, practically imperceptibly, the world changes, pieces fall, the fanciful places begin to fail. The lives of everyone are at stake.

The reader is immerged in such lush and lavish descriptions that swirl around that one may miss important details. This work would benefit from being read a second time just to see how all the parts intertwine.

This feels somewhat like Harry Potter in that the author creates another world where perhaps things in the circus tents are not are they seem-- paper birds that fly, charms, and magic. The magicians work to make the illusions explainable in the Victorian world where it takes place. So that when the magician conjures impossible things, the circus audience willing accepts the show as being an illusion.


2012 ALA Best Adult Genre Fiction

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson/360 pages

What if all your memories vanished every time you went to sleep? Every time you wake up someone has to tell you what has happened for the last 20 years. The man you wake up next to every morning is a stranger and you must trust him to tell you everything. Christine is trying desperately to reclaim her life and her memory. Her devoted husband is the only person in her life until she decides to see a doctor and he recommends writing a journal in hopes that it might trigger some past memories. Christine is putting the pieces of her life back together, but does she really want to know the whole truth? This book will make you think twice about going to sleep at night! Reading List USA assigns the genre "adrenaline" for this book and I agree totally!

Before I Go To Sleep/S.J. Watson/360 pgs

Every morning, Christine awakes to a life she doesn't remember. She remembers nothing that happened the day before and not much of the life she lived prior. She thinks she is still in her twenties not the middle aged woman she is. Most troubling, she doesn't remember the man next to her in bed - her husband. Every morning, he tells her what happened - she was in an accident and suffered brain trauma. But Christine discovers that she is also trying to help herself behind his back. She is seeing a doctor - Dr. Nash, and he has encouraged her to keep a journal. It is through this journal that she begins to pick up the pieces of her life - she is starting to remember bits and pieces of who she really is and what really happened to her. The story was very good but also a bit predictable in places.

Invisible Bridge / Julie Orringer 602 p.

This WWII saga tells the story of the Hungarian Jews; told through the perspective of Andras Levi. Three brothers begin their future: Andras to study architecture in Paris, Tibor to study medicine in Italy, and the youngest leaves school for life on the stage. Andras carries a secret letter for C. Morgenstern. As he falls for the recipient, the tragedies of WWII envelope them. Even though an ally of Germany, Hungary first treats their Jews with some decency, conscripting for hard labor with its hardships and cruelties alternating with time spent at home. Orringer weaves a story of family, love, despair, and struggle against annihilation during the time of war all the while telling the story of Hungary.

2010 Booklist Editors' Choice - Best Fiction Books
2010 New York Times Notable Books - Fiction and Poet
2011 The Reading List (RUSA)

What Happens in London / Julia Quinn 450 p.

Lady Olivia Bevelstoke spies on her new neighbor from her bedroom window after she learns that he may have killed his fiancée. The intriguing man is up to something. Who can spend all his time in a room. Sir Harry Valentine works as a translator for the War Office. She piques his interest -- who wouldn’t with a beautiful blond watching. When the Russian prince becomes interested in Lady Olivia, the War Office gives him an assignment, watch her… the spy spies on the spy! Sir Harry finds himself falling for her.

2010 RITA Winner for Best Regency

2010 Reading List (RUSA)