Book Review: Night Circus

God, what a beautiful book. Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus made me muse on the nature of magic and love, on collaboration, and how sacrifice can transform into a path to the beloved.

The prose in this book is captivating, clear, and mysterious. Halfway through, I was still wondering where this book was going to take me, half-terrified that I would end weeping with the feeling of a knife in my throat. Happily, the author turns away from that cheapest of cheap tricks (an ugly ending) and sticks the landing by finding a way through to a love story for her dear readers. The irony is not lost then, that the book starts in the way it ends, the final flourish like the closing bow to an incredible performance.
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​And the lessons on power! There is a tension in Night Circus between those characters who believe to love is to be weak, and those 

characters who craft something beautiful and redemptive from their love, however imperfect, in such a way that it feeds not just the individual but a whole community of people. That tension is not resolved by the finish of the book, so much as encapsulated for the reader to inspect and ultimately make her own decisions about the truth. 

I finished this book at 3 am after not being able to release myself from its clutches! Now I am driven to deconstruct it as a writer to better understand it, but for all you spectators out there, Night Circus is a performance not to be missed!