First off, if you love Night Circus, you are going to love The Starless Sea!

Erin Morgenstern has such an amazing way with words and pulling you into the world that you can tell she has so lovingly created. Her writing is lyrical and tugs at your heart strings.

Okay...so I may have a small girl crush on Erin, but really who doesn't?

This book's format takes a bit to get used too, so don't let it scare you off. It's basically stories within a story. But everything is connected so make sure to pay attention. ;)

Our main character Zachary is your typical college student that's also your typical introvert. While doing research for a school project, he comes across a very special book at the library. This book leads him to adventures he's really only read about in books. See what Erin did there?

He makes his way to an underground library and meets all sorts of amazing people and people that end up being characters. (Which is why you need to pay attention to the stories.) And the world/library itself is truly amazing and is filled with monsters and bees. (I'm not going to say anymore about that because I don't want to spoil anything.)

I don't want to say anything more about the book as I think people should just go into and let the story speak for itself. It says it a lot better than I ever could.

Highly recommend this book! And if you haven't read Night Circus, you need to do that as well! (The two book are not connected, so you can read them in whatever order you wish.)

" A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun."

A story within a story of a college student who finds an odd book at the library. One of the chapters is about him! He meets a mysterious group of people who introduce him to a secret world. Some chapters are stories from the odd book and others are about Zachary. Definitely for anyone who enjoys fantasy stories.

There are bright spots throughout this book, but overall it was an absolute bore punctuated by brief moments of interest. It's the kind of book that you will either love or hate, and no one will be able to tell you ahead of time which it will be.

For me, the first half was only mildly annoying. The romance is sweet and interesting, if underdeveloped, and the basic premise is solid. However, past the 40 or 50% mark, it devolves into a labyrinthine dreamscape without any plot or reason. Nothing happens for the rest of the book after that. There's no antagonist, nothing to work toward. It's a book about stories with no story of its own.

If this book were better written, it may have accomplished its ambitious goals as a vast, time-jumping epic of intertwining stories. Unfortunately, it ends up being a hodgepodge that barely makes sense some of the time, and makes no sense at all most of the time. And holy comma splice, Batman! I know it was an ARC, so there's a slim chance it'll be rectified in print, but holy CROW. There is a comma splice on every page. At least. Usually more.

This is a book about the power and magic of stories. It is best read in print, and possibly by candlelight, for all the magic to come through, but even reading the e-book was very magical.

There's no meaningful way to sum up this book or to adequately capture the beauty of the language except to say that the story is wonderful and the language more than does it justice. But here's a taste (and definitely not the best taste, but the easiest one to take out of context): "I don't know if I believe that [endings are what give stories meaning]. I think the whole story has meaning but I also think to have a whole story-shaped story it needs some sort of resolution. Not even a resolution, some appropriate place to leave it. A goodbye. I think the best stories feel like they're still going, somewhere, out in story space." And later, "...no story ever truly ends as long as it is told."

Morgenstern is true to her word here. In and around all this magic and fancy, there's an actual plot, which is brought to something sort of like a resolution by the end. But this story definitely keeps going. Not in the sense of needing a sequel (although I wouldn't complain), but in the sense that it will live in my head for a long time to come.

This book did not disappoint. I was curious since I loved her first book so much! This is quite a different story but I loved every moment of this novel. Highly read and recommend!!

Based on the description, I thought this would be a definite like for me. I just can't get into it. Something about the writing style is not for me, but I see why lots of readers are interested in this one.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern was something! I honestly felt confused a fair bit, but overall, I did end up enjoying most of the book. Based on the author alone, I know there will be a waitlist of people wanting to read it at my library, so we will be purchasing several copies. Thank you for letting me read it early.

I received a digital ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is amazing. Like its namesake, The Starless Sea is full of stories and magic. It is a wonderful interweaving of at least five or six narratives, and I can't wait to read it again and find more ways everything connects together. Highly, highly recommended.

Morgenstern's latest epic is a wonder for fantasy readers! Our libraries will be purchasing copies and book-talking them to our fantasy lovers and our bibliophiles. Stories about stories is a unique setting - those readers not intimidated by the length of the book and the amount of time to develop the plot will be rewarded for their patience.

This title will be popular because of the author's previous work so the library will purchase it. There is no plot to this title and I think this will put off a lot of readers.

Since reading this, Erin Morgenstern has become a new favorite author. Yep this book was that good. I spent an entire weekend reading it and I couldn't stop! The adventure takes a hold of you in such a beautiful way. The characters become your family, just like they become a family to each other. Morgenstern manages to make a perfect ending that leaves all the characters with what they do and don't deserve. This story is well-plotted, unique and unlike any other book out there.

The concept of an underground library world that has existed for centuries is AMAZING. Morgenstern comes up with many original ideas and plot lines in this book. I can't even compare it to another story! The pure uniqueness of it is what makes it stunning. I could never have guessed how the book ended. No spoilers, but what happens to the heart Dorian obtains is such an ingenious ending!

Just a warning for hesitant readers: the beginning is off to a slow start. It took me fifty or so pages to get into the story. There's so much plot and mythology to build up to so it takes awhile for the puzzle pieces to connect. However, the slow build up is worth it! No one will regret befriending Zachary, Dorian, Simon, Eleanor, Mirabel, Katrina, the Keeper and even the random cats that appear in the book. All of these lovable characters now have a special place in my heart. I love the gorgeous relationships, both romantic and platonic. The only critiques I have is that I wanted more scenes with Zachary's amazing mother and I wished the cats played a more important role in the story. This is a definite must-read for all fantasy fans and classic book lovers.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

The Starless Sea was a book of stories, love, bees, swords and keys. It was also so beautiful that when it ended I actually shed a tear or two. I don’t think it is for everyone but for the lucky ones, it is pure magic.

I will admit, it took me a few chapters to get into the book and it was confusing at first. But once you give yourself up to this magical story and the beautiful writing, it is well worth the amazing ride you experience. When the book ended, I wanted to start reading it from the beginning again!

Wow, this book! It is very hard for me to wrap up my thoughts and feelings about it in this review, but I will try.

This book is just brilliant in its writing and storyline. The writing is just exquisite and beautiful. The descriptions are otherworldly and I found myself rereading many passages just to hear them in my head again. The characters are very well done as well, with many of them being very memorable.

The structure of the book is a little hard to get into. It starts off with some chapters that are almost like short stories and don’t appear to connect in any way. These short vignettes continue throughout the book, but are interspersed with longer chapters told from mostly Zachary’s point of view, but some other characters as well. You can’t tell right away how all of these various little stories will come into play in the big overall plot, but by the end you are amazed at how the stories were all woven together into the most marvelous book I have read this year.

I liked Zachary from the start. He is a quiet and shy young man, who wants to just hang out in his room and read everything. But once he reads that one book with his story in it, he can’t let it go and that is what sets him off on the adventure of a life time. He doesn’t quite know what to make of the whole situation he finds himself in, but he doesn’t let anything stop him once he gets going.

Dorian was a bit harder to warm up too. He starts off as a bit of a villain, but eventually you come to see that he is just a victim of his own story. I ended up liking him and seeing how he felt about Zachary and the hidden world they find themselves helped with that. But the end of the book I was rooting for that happy ending for the two of them.

Mirabel was a fun character. She was feisty and always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else. She was always getting Zachary out of trouble and was sort of his guide through most of the book.

The setting of the library was amazingly well done. I often felt like this place really exists. I loved that there were cats that seemed to live there and the way things just seem to appear when Zachary or any character needs them makes it almost seem like a sentient being. The pacing wasn’t exactly fast, but it never felt slow. The story was always exciting enough to keep you reading into the night.

My only negative comment was maybe the ending. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, it was just a bit open ended and didn’t really feel like the story was over. But that could just be me, and I might change my mind when I read it again, and this is a book I will definitely reread, perhaps more than once.

This book is a must read if you liked the Night Circus or even if you didn’t. If you like books about stories with in stories then you must pick this one up.

Like everyone else who read The Night Circus, I've been eagerly anticipating whatever Erin Morgenstern came up with next. And The Starless Sea did not disappoint. The whimsy and magic of The Night Circus are certainly present in The Starless Sea, but the story unfolds in such a beautiful way that it can't really be compared to the previous novel. Morgenstern's writing is stunning, and the way she weaves stories within the story is captivating. This one moves slower than The Night Circus, at least it did for me, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy every minute I spent with it. This is the sort of book you take your time with, and the payoff is worth it. Highly recommend for anyone who loved The Night Circus, for fans of other magical prose (Neil Gaiman is the most apt comparison for me), or anyone who just loves stories about stories.

Being a librarian I couldn't help but love the idea of the Archives and the Collector's Club and the Starless Sea. However, the story wandered too much for my liking.

This is a Möbius strip of a novel, with a graduate student, an underground library, and layers upon layers of twisty stories to sort through. It’s magical and fantastical and oh so worth the delightful ride it takes you on.

I absolutely love Erin Morgenstern’s writing. Even when she had only published one book I knew she would be one of my favorite writers. This book proved me right! It is one of my top favorite books, if not my absolute favorite!! It’s so difficult to describe because it is about so much more than the synopsis. I found this book hypnotizing and once I really started it, impossible to stop thinking about and reading.

I have been waiting for another book by Erin Morgenstern as soon as I closed the cover of *The Night Circus*. I was nervous, however, for her second novel in case it didn't live up to the beloved first. Readers, you should know that this book is phenomenal! It doesn't read like a page turner. That atmosphere and the characters are so complex, I found myself savoring each word and sentence and scene. I made notes and thought about what I read and discussed it with a reading buddy. It made the experience even richer and complete.

I loved it!

Many thanks to NetGalley and especially the staff at Doubleday for the ARC of this book!

My librarian heart fell in love with this book. "The Starless Sea" is a sparklingly beautiful puzzle of a story wrapped up in magic. Every twist and turn through the underground world in which the story is set feels both ethereally dream-like and tangibly real. Zachary Ezra Rawlins stumbles into the fulfillment of his own destiny when he finds an old volume in the library that contains, unbelievably, the story of his own vivid childhood encounter with a mural of a door, that seemed to him like magic. The journey that ensues is aesthetically and emotionally beautiful, full of both love and loss and characters with whom you have no choice but to empathize with. Fans of magical realism, literature-within-literature, and Morgenstern's last incredible novel, "The Night Circus," will adore "The Starless Sea."

Wow. So beautiful. I love the lyrical beauty of Erin Morgenstern's writing. I love this love story of stories. I really cant wait to read again. If you love books, stories, and storytelling, this book will sweep you away.