All posts tagged Stephanie Garber

Finale Goes Out With a Bang

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments
Finale cover

I was so excited when I got an email from Netgalley saying I was approved to read Finale by Stephanie Garber. I loved Caraval and Legendary, and had already pre-ordered it. My Advanced Review copy was given to me in exchange for an honest review. I absolutely loved this book.

Because this is the third book in a series, this review contains spoilers from the previous two books.

Finale starts shortly after Legendary ends. Legend is going to be the emperor, and after leaving Tella at the end of the last book, only visits her in dreams. Their mother is still asleep. Scarlett has decided that she wants to get to know her former fiancée Nicholas even though she has feelings for Julian. Nothing is perfect.

And everything is about to get worse.

When the Fates start waking up, Tella witnesses something heartbreaking… and disturbing. She vows to get back at The Fallen Star, who seems to be the worst of the Fates. In order to hurt him, she has to find out what his weakness is. Then she has to exploit it to kill him.

Meanwhile, Scarlett decided that she wanted to have Julian and Nicholas compete with each other so she can decide who she will marry. Almost as soon as she makes that deal, she realizes that she wants Julian. Before she can tell them both that, her life turns south as well.

What follows is a beautiful, twisty story where secrets are revealed, people have to work with people they otherwise wouldn’t want to work with, and love triangles resolve quite nicely. All of this neatly packaged amidst a sea of gorgeous words and lines that give me all the feels.

I recently started a book journal where I write down some of my favorite quotes and reactions to books I read. There were so many quotes I wrote down from this book. “She looked the way Love might have looked if Love looked in a mirror, infectuously happy and radiantly beautiful.” Also I loved the line “maybe no one deserved love. Maybe love was always a gift.” My favorite line in the book was the last two sentences of chapter 59. I can’t quote it here because of spoilers.

The heart on the cover of Finale tells you exactly how I feel about it. The ending was amazing. I highly recommend it.

Legendary was Just That

By Brookelorren on 3 Comments

Legendary CoverLegendary finally became available to me at the library, and I was so happy to be able to read it.  It is the second book in Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series.  Finale will be out next year.

After Caraval, Tella and Scarlett end up going to another Caraval.  Usually, there is only one a year, but this year, there is another one in only a few more days, held in honor of Empress Elantine’s seventy-fifth birthday.

Legendary is told from Tella’s perspective.  Tella discovers that her mom is still alive.  With the help of her “friend”, she’s trying to find out where her mom is and to save her.  In order to save her mom, she needs to find out who Legend is, which means she has to participate in and win Caraval.

It’s not all that easy.

A few complications occur along the way.  First, Tella is forced to fake an engagement with the Empress’s heir.  Then, the stakes are raised even higher: if she doesn’t win Caraval, she discovers that both she and her mom will die.  And then she falls in love.  To make matters worse, if she saves her own life and that of her mom’s, she might just hurt the boy she loves.  The decisions seem impossible.

We don’t see a lot of Scarlett in this story.  While Caraval focused a lot on the relationship between siblings, Legendary focused on Tella’s feelings about her mother.  Scarlett is away for much of the time, trying to sort out the things going on in her life (I don’t want to give away spoilers here, so I’m not saying what).

Legendary kept me wanting to read from the beginning until the very end.  Like Caraval, Legendary is full of magic and mystery.  I love how we got to see more of Tella’s character.  She’s much more impressive once you get to know her.  I love the decisions that she makes, and I wish the best for her.  I will definitely be reading Finale once it comes out next year.

Caraval Invites You to a Magical World

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments

Welcome to the exciting world of Caraval!  That is what my library could have told me when I found out it was available for download after a short time on the waiting list.  Caraval is a book full of magic, mystery, danger, and love (mostly between sisters).

Scarlett had always wanted to experience the magic that was Caraval.  From the age of ten, she wrote to Legend, the Master of Caraval, hoping to get tickets for her and her sister Donatella (Tella).  Her grandmother had told her stories and made it seem wonderful.  It seemed like a wonderful dream, while in her own life…

Her father was abusive, he wouldn’t let them leave the island that they lived on, and she decided to get married to someone that she had never met just to escape.  One day, she finally gets tickets to Caraval, after she had given up.  She no longer wants to go, thinking that her marriage will save her from her toxic life.

She ends up going anyway; you’ll just have to read the book to find out how.  After she gets there, she discovers that it’s not quite what she was expecting.  It seems to be a magical, more dangerous version of Las Vegas, where everything that happens in Caraval is supposed to stay there.  We find out that not everything stays there, however.  Scarlett’s sister is kidnapped, and she has to find her before it is too late.

She ends up partnering up with Julian, a brash sailor who is definitely not Scarlett’s type, although deep down inside, she finds him to be devastatingly handsome.  Over the course of the search, Scarlett grows as a person, and comes to the realization that maybe she’s putting her hopes into the wrong things.

In the end, we find out the truth about what went on in Caraval.  Maybe… Scarlett wasn’t actually saving Tella after all.  Perhaps Tella was saving her.  Maybe Julian isn’t actually a sailor.  Again, you’ll have to read to find out.

What I Liked

I enjoyed this book.  The characters were likeable, and they grew as people as they struggled through the book.  Scarlett is very practical (maybe a little too much so) and protective of her impulsive sister.  Tella is a little too impulsive.  The love between these sisters is what drives the story, which I found to be a really sweet underlying theme.


There was a lot of mystery to this book, and as I read, I couldn’t help but to wonder what was really going on.  In Caraval, nothing is exactly as it seems.  The book reveals much of its mysteries by the end of the book… but then we realize that there is one more mystery to be solved.  Now I can’t wait to read the next book, which I’m on the waiting list to read at the library.

Anything I Didn’t Like?

I can’t think of anything that I didn’t like about this book.  Maybe at the beginning of the book, Scarlett seems a little hopeless and clueless, but as she grows throughout the book, she becomes a strong person in her own right.

I enjoyed Caraval quite a lot and am looking forward to reading the next book, Legendary, as it becomes available.  If you haven’t read it yet and choose to check it out, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.