This was a delightful, strange tale... and I loved every minute of it! The neo-pronouns tripped me up a little, but that's on me and not the author or the novel. If you like fey stories, definitely recommend this!

My primary reading goal for 2021 is to catch up on the backlog of 2020, haha! I got pretty far behind with pandemic anxiety, and now that I’m back into it, there are so many good books I mean to read. I’m sure I’ll come up with an arbitrary number for my Goodreads goal, but so far, I’m on track with this delightful, little book.

Ivory and Rosie are twins with different fathers. Their mother couldn’t choose between them and raised them by herself (and with a circus troupe). Though they share the bond of sisters, the two girls are very different. Ivory is a backstage kind of girl, interested in engineering, and runs the show. Rosie is in the spotlight, but when she’s not performing, she prefers solitude (or the company of her bear) and dark quiet to recover from the energy performing takes out of her. When religious forces threaten to end the circus’ run, the girls will have to work together to save the circus and their family, all with a little help from magic.

I loved this book. I started it a while back at work, and would pick it up as I needed a break. The story is told in alternative POVs. Rosie speaks in verse, and Ivory in prose. I loved that neither girl played into troupes or stereotypes. Each contains multitudes, and I loved the fantasy elements weaved into their story. Also, I’m a sucker for circus tales. Make them queer and you GOT me.

Once again, the silver lining to my backlog is that if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, you can read it right now. I’d definitely recommend adding it to your 2020 lineup.

Thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group and NetGalley for the advance digital reading copy of this book.

This was a strange book about twin girls and the circus their mother owns and runs.  I really enjoyed the story although I found the attempt at non-binary pronouns for the Fey characters to be confusing.  I wish the author had just used they/their to describe the Fey instead of Fe/Fer.

**I received a copy of this book on Netgalley for an honest review. All opinions are entirely my own**
This book had the potential to be something great. Retellings are very popular and I've never heard of any for Snow White and Rose Red. To be honest, though, I hadn't heard of the original story at all before this. This book also had so many LGBTQ+ elements in it, which is another thing it had going for it. I love a good retelling and love a good LGBTQ+ story, so I had pretty high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, it was pretty disappointing.
Both the main characters have a POV, one written in normal text, and the other in prose. That made it easy to distinguish the two POVs, but I just wasn't a fan of the prose. I normally like poetry, but the poetry in this book wasn't my cup of tea.
Both main characters had love interests as well, which is where the LGBTQ+ representation comes in. I think the representation was done very well. I really enjoyed it. I did have a hard time understanding Tem's pronouns at first because I had never heard of fe/fer. I did do some Google searching though and ended up understanding after that.
I didn't like how Ivory seemed to be almost obsessed with Tem's appearance when she was thinking about them and that's honestly all she seems to do. She thinks about Tem or her sister/mother or the circus. The dialogue in this book seems very scarce.
My biggest problems with this book though are the lack of world-building, which there isn't a whole lot of. There's a little bit of history, but not much; the lack of character development, which is just nonexistent; and the lack of a plot, which also was nonexistent. I honestly didn't understand the point of the book until the last 30 pages.
Overall, this book could have used a lot of work. The LGBTQ+ representation was great, but that's it. There just wasn't enough to this book.

I love retellings, so it's sometimes hard for one to stand out, but this one definitely did. It hit on some current issues without being preachy. It was highly detailed and a book I didn't want to put down.

The Circus Rose by Betsy Cornwell was a book that just missed the mark for me. I love retellings but I just didn't find myself connecting to this book. I found myself bored and uninterested.

This book quickly became a disappointment. I couldn't finish it. In fact, it hit the trifecta of failure: poor writing, absent plot, and uninteresting characters.

This book concerns two girls who are born of the same mother at the same time, but from different fathers. They are considered twins. One twin is supposed to be logical, technical, and independent while the other is slightly dissociated from the real world, and highly dependent. This is reflected mostly through Ivory as her parts are written in clear (well, clearer) prose while Rose's are in abstract poetry.

It wasn't difficult to follow the writing per se, but the plot required deeper investigation. It was merely description. It told rather than showed. Ivory would describe things that happened, but nothing was happening in the moment. Once I finally trudged through to where I assume the plot finally started, it became confusing and unengaging. I was already tired of the characters I cared so little for.

Then another character is introduced. They are fae. The writer attempted to make the fae in her world genderless. I was intrigued by this idea! The execution of the idea, though, caused yet more confusion and disappointment. The fae have their own pronouns: [insert here]. Again, I see why the writer does this, in support of their genderlessness. However, it suspends the disbelief of the reader who attempts to accept it with little success. This character is also interesting because of their magical abilities. Yet again, though, it feels as if the world of the story changes from what the reader has come to understand. We weren't introduced to fae before this character came, nor were we privy to actual magic. The only nugget we get is when ivory likens her engineering skills to that of magic- which could, arguably, be completely metaphorical as far as the reader is concerned.

It feels like the writer spends time explaining the characters and their world within the circus (except for Ivory's short stint at a school). She should have been building the world.

There's another main character worth mentioning in addition to their mother and the few other circus folks. His name is Bear. He is, in fact, a bear. As far as we are concerned throughout the first third of the book, he has no magical powers. He is simply a circus bear with whom Rose has a weird attachment. It's almost as if he serves as her teddy bear? She goes to him for comfort and often sleeps with him. Ivory discusses this and laments over losing Rose's companionship in this way and states that she's lonely.

She has a crush on the fae, though? We aren't sure if this is authentic or simply a fascination with otherness. I hate that about this book, too- the glorification and fascination of the Other by "typical" characters. I must mention here that this book is discussed and described as being about Queerness. I can see this as the fae are genderless, Ivory clearly isn't heterosexual, and Rose is atypical. This, too, led to disappointment. It appears that Queerness™ was included and labelled for the sake of inclusion rather than authentically.

I finally stopped reading when the circus moves to a different location (okay) and then suddenly the two fathers appear and both propose to their mom...um, what?? I couldn't continue.

This story moved all over the place. I could track it, but failed to see the purpose. The characters invoked no emotions or attachments in me. The writing itself was subpar. This trifecta fueled a negative reading experience and secured a poor rating in my eyes.

DNF around the 40 page mark.

I was really interested in the concept of this retelling, and thought it had a lot of promise, but several elements didn't end up working for me.

The fact that one of the POVs was entirely in verse is cool, don't get me wrong, but it yanked me right out of the story every single time. I also felt like the pacing in the 40 or so pages I read was a little wonky. I'm not a strict adherent of show-don't-tell, but if you're going to tell me a story, I need to fall so deeply in love with your prose that I don't actually care if anything happens in the story. While the writing was perfectly fine here, it didn't quite reach that level for me.

If you're a fan of novels in verse, fairytale retellings, and kind of experimental structures, give it a try! It may be what you're looking for.

The Circus Rose is a fun, queer spin on the Snow White and Rose Red tale filled with interesting characters that'll have you rooting for them and their circus found family. Come for the circus, stay for the characters and the battle against religious extremist forces.

The first thing I noticed was the lyrical writing style. This is not my typical writing style of choice when I am looking for a novel to read. The plot was very captivating and I think it was almost what I was hoping for in this book. It did manage to hold my attention the entire time. 

The lyrical writing and dual POV is what really ruined the book for me though. Some chapters I dreaded reading and I felt I was pulling myself through the writing.

The writing style in this title is too lyrical and flowery for me. The chapters alternate between sisters and there are poems thoughout the book that baffled me.

Loved this story and will definitely have fans of this book among my students. I haven't been disappointed by a Betsy Cornwell book yet.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This novel evokes magic and magical realism to tell a story of family, prejudice, and finding your place in the world. The story is engaging and the characters are very realistic, but what struck me most what how inclusive the book was, with characters from multiple races, genders and sexual orientations. It was great to read something with so much diversity inherent to the plot.

This is such a beautifully written fantasy novel. The author did a great job building a world full of fantastical elements.

Interesting characters. Intriguing plot. Dynamic prose. My attention was held the entire time. I enjoyed my time reading this one. I’d suggest this story to everyone who likes a more contemporary stuff.

This imaginative and fresh adventure was everything I didn’t know I wanted in a book. The backdrop of a circus lifestyle was fresh and exciting. The romance and intrigue left me gasping for more. Fantastic!

was incredibly excited for The Circus Rose when it was announced, I very much enjoyed Betsy Cornwell’s debut when I read it the first time. And this book is set in the same world, where magic and technology coexist. Sadly, the things I liked from Mechanica and its sequel, Venturess, weren’t there in The Circus Rose.

Mechanica handled, in my opinion, very well emotional abuse and queerplatonic relationships. The characters were charming and the world-building, the conversations about technology and magic, had me at the edge of my seat.

So let’s start there because I really didn’t like this story BUT I went with all the good intentions, hoping to really like it at least. It was a disappointing read and this review, although negative, deeply pains me. But god, sometimes gays can’t save terrible plots.

The Circus Rose follows two very different sisters: Rosie, the performer, and Ivory, the stagemaster. They were raised in their mother’s circus, between acts and tricks, traveling all around the world. When the circus is back to Esting City, the place where their fathers are from but not really their homes, things start to go all wrong. Now it’s up to Ivory to do something? It’s not very clear what the plot is, actually.

The synopsis is very misleading, talking about an accident and Ivory and her crush solving a mystery, when that happens, not kidding, in the latter half of the book. So what’s this book about? I have no idea. Ivory is, apparently, wondering about her role in the circus and about if she wants to do something else. Apparently, because it’s mostly telling at the end but never really discuss?

The writing doesn’t help, the book is told from a dual point of view: Ivory’s chapters are written in prose while Rosie’s are written in verse. Rosie’s chapters were bad, like really bad. Not only they didn’t add anything to the story at all, but the poetry was also pretty terrible. And I love novels in verse! But here it was a mix of metaphors that did absolutely nothing for me except confused me. Ivory’s chapters at least had substance, I guess, but the dialogue was so cringing? I can’t enjoy a book where I don’t like the writing or the plot or care about the characters at all.

This was a wonderful surprise! I wasn’t exactly sure I was going to like this one, just because usually fantasy / religious mix stories never have appealed to me. But I wanted to give this one a chance and I’m so glad I did! 

This is a queer retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, following twins Ivory and Rosie as they live life at their mothers circus, having to fight against religious extremists to save their family and their lovers. 

This is such such a good book. I think I loved it for Tam, who is a Fey and neither male nor female, and Ivory’s romance and their falling in love. I found Rosie’s chapters a little difficult to read at times because of the style of writing, poetry form, but they were still so good and emotional. Betsy Cornwall paints such a beautiful picture of a world filled with magic, technology, wonder and love. I felt sucked in from the very first page and I would completely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the fantasy genre or who likes a little bit of wonder, representation, and resilience in their stories. 

Review to come on Instagram.

A circus family has been on the road for years, and is returning home to the city of Port End. Twins Rosie and Ivory are excited for this homecoming, only their spirits are dampened when it's found that religious zealots called the Brethren have shifted the city's culture to be intolerable toward those who don't live according to the religion's tenets. Rosie is lesbian and Ivory has discovered she's bisexual, so that places them in the crosshairs of the Brethren's wrath if they're not careful. Can these sisters love and live in a city set against them from the onset, or will they face a reckoning at the hands of the Brethren?⁣
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The Circus Rose is an interesting tale for a few reasons. Rosie's story is told in poetic verse, whereas Ivory's ordered mind and experience serves as a reliable narrator. There are some interesting concepts presented, such as a character that exists in a bear's body, invented pronouns to convey non-binary gender characters, and people of the fey. The tale leans heavily on characters and atmosphere, while putting plot largely to the side, which is somewhat unfortunate considering the sisters' interactions with the Brethren held more potential. All in all, this is a unique if somewhat unsatisfying take on "Snow White and Rose Red", but if you're interested in the circus, overcoming religious oppression, or other unique themes at play here, this could be for you. For me, this was not quite what I expected going in, for better or worse.⁣

The second half was the better half, but it happens almost too quickly after the first half dragged on so long with very little taking place. In most cases, if it takes me that long to enjoy a book, I would have quit reading long before it got good.

I enjoyed Rosie's portions, but felt that the balance between the two narratives was off. There were times that Ivory would get pages and pages of prose and then Rosie would get 2-4 lines of poetry and we'd be off on another prose jag. Unfortunately, it left me feeling that either getting more from Rosie or getting nothing from her perspective would have been better. (The latter would have been unfortunate, because there is such a beautiful poem about transformation from her at the end.)

Ivory and her nonbinary magician have a rather steamy romance, and while I'm not generally one for instant romantic connections, I think the nature of living in a traveling circus makes the relationship seem more realistic. 

I enjoyed the world that the author created, and I think that it would be interesting to learn more about the land of Esting and how it came to be such a beautiful but hostile place. Particularly how the Brethren (the fundamentalist religious group) set up their racket. While the novel is set in a steampunk world, it's not really a major focus.

Overall, this isn't a bad story, but the pacing and format might make it a bit niche. I wouldn't say it's a first purchase for most libraries.