So I enjoyed this. Like ALMOST - but not quite - "Water For Elephants" enjoyment (which I ADORED).

So a lot lacked for me in it - namely - more story. What happened to mother specifically and how did that affect the family? Why would father sell his daughter? What's the story with the other "freaks"? The writing was eloquent and the story well imagined - but there simply wasn't enough of it, and the ending felt extremely rushed. This novel needs 100 more pages at least IMHO but I strongly liked it - even if it left me feeling oddly dissatisfied.

This novel had me at circus. It’s just one of those things, like cults, magic, bookstores, that fictionally I find irresistible.
This story goes like this…in Victorian England a girl named Nell with strange birthmarks patterning her skin gets sold to a circus by her father. The circus is owned and operated by two brothers, the brash ambitious ringleader Jasper Jupiter and Toby, the giant quiet photographer, who works behind the scenes. Both brothers are war veterans with all the concomitant trauma, but different guilt allotments where it pertains to the fate of Jasper’s one-time close friend Dash. Dash’s lady love, the bearded lady, is now with the circus, as are great many wonderous acts.
And yet, it is Nell that Jasper decides to make his star attraction. With his ideas and her innate grace, Nell will defy gravity and take to the sky. She will become the Queen of the Moon and Stars. And Jasper’s fortunes will elevate with her.
That’s the idea, anyway. The execution will prove to be more challenging, especially with an ego like Jaspers. There are constant undertones of the crash, a possibility that underscores any flight, shades of Daedalus and Icarus and all that, foreshadowing a tragedy to come.
But meanwhile, the circus will mesmerize you with its wonder, give a young girl a place to belong, a lonely man someone to love and a bunch of outsiders something to hold on to.
So for a fan of circus stories, this is great, this is perfect. So much so I’m going to round up my rating of the it. But is it a perfect book? Well, not quite. I found the tone to lean heavily toward a dreamy, overwritten, severely internalized and overwhelmingly introspective. You spend most of the book inside its characters’ minds. Which is fine, it’s where you want to go as a reader, it might be the only time to have that sort of closeness with another person (albeit fictitious), but in this book the approach is, at times, oppressive.
It also seems to condense a lot of plot in a very short time. It seems like at least a year ought to have passed, but then they state it’s only been two months.
The romance is heavily overwritten too and then all but thrown over in favor of a kinda sorta adopted kid with a surprising speed.
And yet, all in all, it’s a thing of beauty. A very specific melancholic sort of beauty, but still, especially at the end. The denouncement is dramatic, wild, fiery and at the very end…so very sad. Such is life…life outside of the circus anyway. Inside the circus…the show goes on.
Overall, a lovely read. The pacing and dynamics of the narrative were somewhat dragged down by factors explained, but the story always shone through, beckoning like a brightly colored circus tent promising wonders of wonders. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

The best and most honest way I can describe CIRCUS OF WONDERS is, simply, that there's plenty to like, but not a lot to love. I give a lot of credit to Elizabeth Macneal - this 19th-century circus-themed story undoubtedly invites invitations with The Greatest Showman, and Macneal takes care to depict a rougher, more realistic side of the "great show" rather than the glossy, glorified, uplifting revisionism of that blockbuster. It's an intriguing concept and a world filled with flawed characters who aren't necessarily redeemed by singing a ballad with a key change in the last verse.

Unfortunately, I just found myself not quite getting pulled into the story the way I wanted to. I appreciated but couldn't quite connect with the characters, and the pacing alternated between a LOT happening at once and then really slow sections. I really, really loved what Macneal was trying to do with this, and I appreciate the willingness to really dive into the exploitative, self-serving side of Victorian showbiz rather than glorifying it with sparkly nostalgic glasses. I just wish I could have felt a stronger emotional connection. It's a perfectly fine book, but not a reread for me.

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley #netgalley

I got this book because I'm doing a reading bingo and one of the requirements was that one of my books take place at a circus. Not normally my cup of tea but this book really wowed me the setting was so spectacular I couldn't put it down.

This book wasn’t for me, and I stopped reading at 13%. However, if it continues the way it has, the right reader would give it an easy 4 stars.

Trigger alert for selling humans to the zoo with no escape.