Book Review: Legendary by Stephanie Garber

Release Day: May 29th, 2018
Read: August 5th-8th, 2018
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Series: Caraval, #2
Format: ARC, 451 pages
Source: Publisher in exchange for a honest review

Description from GoodReads:

   A heart to protect. A debt to repay. A game to win.

   After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister Scarlett from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name.

   The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more—and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets…including her sister's. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning, and sacrifice. But now the game is asking for more. If Tella can’t fulfill her bargain and deliver Legend’s name, she’ll lose everything she cares about—maybe even her life. But if she wins, Legend and Caraval will be destroyed forever.

   Welcome, welcome to Caraval...the games have only just begun. 

Review:

   Every story has four parts - the beginning, the middle, the almost ending, and the true ending.
   I never really loved Caraval, it was one of those books that I had originally DNF’d and put aside because I could never get into it. I only ended up picking it up again because the hype for it only increased, and so I thought I might as well just finish it. So when Legendary came along, I didn’t really see myself picking it up anytime soon since it just picked up right where the first book ended, but rather than Scarlet, it was from her sister, Tella’s point of view. In the end I only picked it up because I made a bargain with Sabrina from Beyond the Book Reviews. The deal was, I would read Legendary if she read Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas. In the end the bargain worked out in my favour as she finally had to read and suffer the same pain I did when reading the book, and I ended up really enjoying Legendary.

   Legendary was almost something completely different than Caraval. When Stephanie Garber wrote Caraval, she never intended it to be a series, so when the publisher asked her if she wanted to make it one, she hadn’t really planned ahead in order to do so. That’s why if you read Caraval, you don’t really feel like it has a cliffhanger or leads up to anything other than what was already done in the book. With Legendary, she had to make it something entirely new, so in the end, everything I didn’t like about Caraval was gone, and something entirely new took its place.

   The magic of Caraval never felt real it me, it felt like it was stuck in an in between place where you never really knew what was real and what wasn’t. Obviously this was part of the theme of the story, but it never sat well with me and made me feel as if I was stuck behind a glass wall when reading it. With Legendary, the story went in a completely different direction, confirming that magic was real, and so the glass wall disappeared and I was finally able to dig into the story.

   I have a secret love of Tarot cards, so when Stephanie Garber introduced them to the theme of the story I couldn’t help but become enticed. Especially when they had a magical element of sorts. The villains and monsters that came with the story certainly helped add to the magic.

   In the end, Legendary ended up being amazing, and beat whatever expectations I had for the book. With the cliffhanger that Legendary left us, you can certainly expect me to pick up a copy of Finale when that releases May 30th, 2019.

You can find my review of Caraval here.

Rating:

Favourite Quote:

“Her heart was still a little heavy, but she'd decided carrying it around would only maker her stronger.”

Recommend to People Who Enjoy:

Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Tarot Cards, Magic, Games