I’ve heard much about this book and to hear that it was about the circus, I went in expecting it to be a great book.
I am a little disappointed. Although the author no doubt put much research into this, I never got into the story. Maybe because I felt the book didn’t have a really strong, solid plot to it and it just went on and on about Jacob’s day working at the circus. The romance that was thrown in wasn’t believable and therefore, failed to further the paper-thin plot.
Any good story needs a strong cast of characters. ‘Water for the Elephants’ had many interesting characters that went in and out of the woodwork but none of them felt real to me. They were shallow and two-dimensioned and I didn’t have much emotional connection to them. The one character that was arguably more developed was the dwarf and in the end, even Jacob didn’t seem to care much about him. The main character Jacob wasn’t engaging to me; he’s faced with animal abuse and spousal abuse and he feels sorry, etc. etc, but he’s not proactive about anything. His romance with Marlena was…contrived and random. Jacob showed no indication on WHY he loves her – readers are just told that ‘She looks like Catherine’ (a college crush) and they just fall madly in love with each other. The dialogue between them was just cringe-worthy and mostly consisted of Marlena bursting into tears. Not exactly strong enough to have the whole book revolve around their relationship, which I think is the downfall of this book.
The writing style of this book was very straight-forward and easy to read. I was expecting some great, beautiful writing hearing all those positive reviews like in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ but I guess not. The writing and the plot seemed amateurish and predictable. The ending was just too contrived and too neatly wrapped up.
All in all, this was a quick read, not really thought-provoking or challenging. I was reading it while on breaks and it was easy to fall out and in of it – which isn’t rea
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