*I received a complimentary copy of this book from Doubleday Books through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.*

It took me SO LONG to finish this book. And now that I have finally finished I have mixed feelings…

This was just too complicated for me. There were too many story lines, too many characters, too much happening. Even the writing was a little too much. There were so many symbols and hidden meanings that many things just went right over my head. I think having less symbolism would’ve streamlined the story and made it more enjoyable to read. I also found the jumping back forth between stories to be extremely distracting. Every time the story jumped form Ezra or Dorian to a story from Sweet Sorrows I found myself being pulled away from the story that I actually cared about. The only time that I didn’t feel that way was during the Eleanor and Simon excerpts. Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough for this kind of book….

I loved the main characters. Dorian and Ezra are pretty much the only reason that I kept reading. Then when Eleanor and Simon were introduced later in the story I found that I was also invested in their story line. I loved Kat and the Keeper and Allegra; pretty much all the side characters. I did enjoy how all the stories tied in at the end, but I didn’t get that feeling of satisfaction that you get when you finish a really good book. By the time all the stories wrapped up I was too frustrated trying to keep all the characters and plots straight, that I just didn’t care anymore.

Overall, this was just fine for me. I still love Erin Morgenstern and 100% recommend The Night Circus.

My favorite book of 2019! I am a huge fan of The Night Circus, so Starless had big shoes to fill, but I loved it. Perfect writing, characters, everything. Highly recommend.

What a wonderful ride this book was. It was such an enchanting story with small stories mixed in. This book was genius and unlike anything I have ever read, I love it!

4 stars for the overall theme of the book....not so much for the story as a whole. I liked parts of it, but then other parts were really confusing. Apparently there is a romance...it kind of pops up out of nowhere and I didn't really see it as a romance/falling in love at all.
But overall....underground secret society of book lovers...yes please!

This book is great for anyone who fell in love with the Night Circus, or Shadow of the Wind. It is a love letter for readers. It was so highly anticipated and did not disappoint. I will be recommending this to anyone who wants a romantic fantasy or who is just looking for a great read.

So I was a big, big fan of The Night Circus and I was worried that after years of not publishing anything new, Erin Morgenstern would not be able to replicate the feeling and magic that I had from that book. SPOILER ALERT: SHE CAN and SHE DID. A totally different story in a totally different magic world with wonderful characters. IT IS MAGIC, and if you like magic and fantasy and the gays this book is for you. I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own

I loved this book! The words, the imagery...just fantastic! With that said, it left me so very confused. I’m not really sure how all the stories connected and not everything was resolved. All in all, I’m not sorry I read it and will be thinking about this book for a while.

I read this book very slowly, savoring Erin Morgenstern’s dreamy words. As soon as I was finished I wanted to pick it up again and read it for the plot. I enjoyed all the myths and fables intertwined with the main story but admit I was a bit confused by how it all fits together. A closer second read should do the trick.
If you enjoyed The Night Circus or are just a lover of stories, you won’t be disappointed by The Starless Sea.

Absolutely beautiful, intense, and almost indescribable. The Night Circus is one of my favorite brain-echoing books, and The Starless Sea is equally haunting. The story is so layered that I still turn the story over and over in my mind, months after finishing the novel.

I got the opportunity to meet Erin Morgenstern at the Decatur Book Fair a few years ago where she spoke of writing Night Circus. I enjoyed her talk and loved Night Circus - it is one of my favorite novels. So it was with great anticipation that I waited to read her next novel, The Starless Sea. The book trailers and blurs spoke of it as being about Books, Libraries, and Magic - how could that go wrong? Sadly, it did, for me, with this novel. It starts out fine. The main character, Zachary, starts to develop into a likable character - he is a gamer, a lover of books, and an academic. When he is not gaming, he is perusing the library and reading. But he gets lost, figurately and literally. He loses himself and my empathy as he moves through the novel. There is one character that I did end up liking but she was a minor character that only showed up at the beginning of the novel and briefly, as an offshoot back to reality, throughout, Katrina Hawkins. All other characters didn't seem to know where they were going or what they were doing. The novel felt, for me, like something akin to Alice In Wonderland mixed with what I would perceive as an extremely bad acid trip. I couldn't find a plot - there were endless meandering and aimless confusion. The story was just lost. It is written with beautifully description and whimsey but without a plot, all was lost for me. I was disheartened that I didn't like the novel more but I will look for Erin Morgenstern's next novel because I loved Night Circus so much and will continue to highly recommend her first novel.

this is a wonderful weaving of many stories that come all together as the book goes on. it was a book i wanted to both devour and savor. the imagery and symbolism were wonderful and the description of place made me feel like i was along on the adventure even when sometimes i would not have liked to shared the experience. i loved night circus and was hesitant to dive in lest i be disappointed. i was not. a must for people who love stories and books.

My brain is mush after trudging my way through this novel. I tried so hard to like this. Maybe I was trying to hard? I don’t know, all I do know is that this is one of the most complex stories I’ve ever read. Too complex to enjoy. Reminded me of those Russian dolls inside of dolls... except stories inside of stories that just kept going on & on & on. I kept hoping everything was just going to click, but it never did. I’m giving it a 3 stars for the amazing imagery & the original concept. Really wish I’d been able to follow where it led.

So good! I think I may like it a little less than Night Circus in that I didn’t connect to the characters as much but the storytelling is divine and I don’t think anyone can weave together so many stories as seamlessly and gorgeously as Morgenstern does. Love a story that gives you so many stories for the price of one in simply beautiful language.

The Starless Sea is a love song to stories and storytelling. I loved The Night Circus, so I was really looking forward to this one, but I found reading it to be very frustrating. The story itself is great - Zachary is a grad student studying video games who comes across a mysterious book, and then a mysterious society, and then a mysterious land. I was really invested in him and in Mirabel and Dorian, two strangers central to whatever it is that is going on. Unfortunately, the structure of the book didn't work for me. Every other chapter alternates - so we read about Zachary and then we read a fairy tale or fable or section of the book he found. (And then other books and other characters' stories.) The constant interruption meant that I became somewhat disengaged with what was happening with Zachary, and the book felt overly long. (I think at 100 pages could've been edited out.) I really liked his friend Kat's story as well, but it was brought in almost too late. I think I was supposed to be paying way more attention to the details in the other stories, and while a lot of them were wonderful on their own, they just bogged me down. I wanted more character development, and more development of Dorian and Zachary's relationship. I do think a lot of people will love this though, and I really liked the pieces of it - it just didn't work for me as a whole.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern was a beautifully written story about a lost world that centers around books. I found the descriptions to be lovely and the characters to be enchanting. I felt a bit of a lull in the story about midway and almost had trouble continuing it, but I was drawn back by the idea of the Starless Sea and how all the stories would fit together. Overall, I give it 4 stars.

Worth the wait! The Night Circus is one of my all-time favorite books and I honestly think I loved the Starless Sea even more.

This is not usually the genre that I read but I LOVED The Night Circus! This book was just as good. I love how the author writes. It took me a while to read it but I savored every page!

The perfect book for lovers of story! This new title by Morgenstern was captivating and gripping--how I wished that I could go in search of the starless sea myself. The characters were intriguing and every step of Zachary's journey was interesting--this is definitely a book you fall into. I especially loved all the gaming references as there aren't many books that feature those and I very much appreciated that!

2.5 stars
DNF...for now. I'm about 50% of the way through, but it's taken me weeks to get to that point. I love the beautifully descriptive writing, but the pace is oh-so-slow with what feels like deceptively little happening. Now I loved Morgenstern's first novel, The Night Circus, so I had high hopes for this one. I do still plan to finish it and will update my review at that point, but this is going to be a love/hate book for most readers. This is a novel about storytelling, so it's understandable that there are a great deal of short stories mixed in with the overarching plot. Although I enjoy many of the short stories, the frequent interruption of the main plot caused me to lose my tenuous interest I had managed to build up with the initial story of Zachary. Also, with a novel about storytelling there is a great deal of telling rather than action, making this far from a page-turner. I would suggest this to fans of Morgenstern to at least try, and for readers who don't mind a slower paced novel with beautiful prose that "tells" rather than "shows."

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm sure there was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was going to be a hit. Erin Morgenstern is truly gifted, and it's always a pleasure to dive into the worlds that she creates. This time it is especially pleasurable for book lovers. Morgenstern's "the Starless Sea," is pure magic.