DNF at 25%. It's been over five years since I received this ARC. I gave it a go and have decided it is not for me. It interested me then and no longer does now.

Great book, love this author and how they can keep my attention to the end! The plot is well developed, characters are believable and they obviously paid attention to detail to make the story worth your time to read.

DNF at 9.67 % - not even 10%. I'm sorry. I tried. I really did! But there are some things that are beyond even my powers as a reader. And a stubborn one at that!

Emmaline is a teen girl who's bored out of her mind, until a circus rolls into town. That's when everything goes south, as Emma is tricked into becoming the new Girl in the Box, the circus's secret key to immortality.

That's as far as I got. I couldn't get past the point where Emma became the Girl in the Box, because of Emma herself. And that was disappointing, because the concept was gooooooood, and I love circus themes so much!

Unless I'm just stuck mentally in another era, there is no plausible way for a teenager to be so unbelievably dumb, with zero sense of both logic and survival instincts! And it took me almost a chapter to understand what was wrong with her, mind you - she was Bella!

A quick note for all writers, and take it as a humble request from a fed-up reader and reviewer. I understand that Meyers has earned a lot of money from what many of you consider a masterpiece (questionable word to use, if you ask me, but each to their own tastes, I suppose). But that doesn't mean the rest of you should follow her example in terms of character creation - it worked once, because people back then weren't so distracted by something new, aka a shallow, colorless female lead that had no substance of her own so anyone could relate to her. It's done, though. Over. Creating more 'Bellas' is not only unrealistic - it's also depressing. Stop.

***I was given an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinion stated in this review is solely mine, and no compensation was given or taken to alter it.***

As soon as I heard that this book had a magical carnival setting I was intrigued and I wanted to read it. To be honest the setting of this book was definitely my favourite part, but I had problems with literary everything else. Which is why this book disappointed me as much as it did. I just expected to enjoy it a lot more than I did in the end.

My two biggest problems in this book were the characters and the romance. I didn’t really care about any of the characters in this story, neither main or side ones. The two main characters were the worst thought, I was annoyed at them throughout the whole book. Obviously this made me not have that much fun while reading By a Charm and a Curse, as I do like to read about characters that I care about. The romance between them was another aspect of this book that really bothered me. First of all it was insta-love and also very unbelievable at the same time. I seriously couldn’t stand them together.

The only reason that this book is getting two stars, and not one, is due to the carnival setting. I enjoyed learning more about it and the world in general was interesting as well. The plot was alright, nothing too outstanding but still interesting enough. The writing style was very descriptive and I enjoyed it a lot. Which makes me even more disappointed that I didn’t like this book. I just really couldn’t stand the characters or the romance.

As you can tell by my review, By a Charm and a Curse just wasn’t a book for me. I was very disappointed in it, especially since it sounded like a book that I could love.

I wanted to enjoy this book, unfortunately my expectations were a bit too high. I didn't realize a small detail from this story would bother me as much as it did, and unfortunately I was unable to continue reading this book.

I expected this to be a whole lot better than this turned out to be. Though I did finish reading, it was underwhelming and could have been better.

I am a sucker for stories set in and around the circus, carnival, fair, and the like, mostly because I enjoy visiting them so much in real life. There’s just something almost magical about them, even when they’re not actually magical, right? Well, the Carnival Fantastic in By a Charm and a Curse has the excitement and lure of a typical carnival, coupled with actual magic: the festival is held together by, you guessed, a charm and a curse! It was a really neat concept, with a charm that kept the carnival members free from harm while working and also keeps them from aging past about 20 years old. Of course there’s also the downside, that nasty curse that the Person in the Box is required to suffer in order to keep the charm going.

I really enjoyed reading this story, it was magical like I wanted, with characters you root for and a sweet romance. I also loved the idea that we can each decide for ourselves what “home” means, and that it can be not just a place, but a person or group of people. It’s something that we don’t often think about, I’d wager, but following the characters to this conclusion reminded me that home should equal love, and if that’s not what you find in your physical home-space, you should go out and grab it somewhere else.

I’d recommend this to fans of stories centered around the circus/carnival, as well as fans of sweet romance, stories told from dual perspectives, and finding hints of magic in our everyday world. Thanks to Jaime Questell for sharing her story with us, and to Entangled Teen for letting me take part in this tour!

Rating: 4 magical stars!

*Disclosure: I received an early e-copy of this book from the publisher, but my honest rating and review and was not required in order to receive it.

This book would be 5 stars if I felt like it sucked me in in the beginning. It took some time, but once I got sucked in, I was hooked.
It's a young adult standalone. It would be good for teens and older as there is violence and death.
The writing is good and the characters are likeable.
Told in both Benjamin and Emma's POV.
The story will leave you wanting more Ben and Emma.

The unfortunate truth is that The Night Circus has basically ruined me for all other circus books and By a Charm and a Curse fell on the disappointing side of things. Though it's been compared to TNC and Caraval, I didn't see much of a resemblance beyond the setting (in a way, but still not a great comparison).

I should have DNFed it. I did, temporarily, several times between the 0% and 30% mark. The characters didn't hook me. In fact, I just flat-out didn't like Emmaline. She immediately struck me as falling into the "not like other girls" trap and I wasn't here for it. As soon as a new boy was introduced in the story, she's all over him and suddenly we have an insta-love cringe-fest. 

By this point I lost all hope for this book. The story came together too easily, and I never worried about the characters. In part because I just didn't care about them but also I never felt like anything bad would really happen (or if it did, it wouldn't last).

But I will say that Questell has a decent writing style. While the execution of the story wasn't working for me, the writing is clean and easy to read. Plus, the whole carnival setting is my jam and I loved the way the author set up the world. 

By a Charm and a Curse isn't truly a terrible book. For me, it had one too many elements that bored me so I struggled to get through it, but thankfully it's a standalone so you aren't committing yourself to a long book. I can't say I personally recommend it but if it sounds like your kind of book from the synopsis, give it a go!

Traveling carnivals and a life balanced by good and bad, plus a beautiful cover, were all the reasons I picked up By A Charm and A Curse by Jaime Questell. Something about the transience of carnival life that is both sad and romantic absolutely piques my interest. This idea of something that is meant to bring joy and happiness and novelty to others being the complete opposite of what those involved in the making experience and that the author thought to couple that feeling with the idea of a curse and a charm being placed, absolutely made this story work. I really, really enjoyed it, and I think if I were a younger person, it would have been a quick and easy favorite.

The story starts as many YA romancey books do, young girl is miserable in a new town. People may hate on this, call it cliche, call it the Bella Swan syndrome, but honestly? Those people need to grow up and maybe develop greater insight into life in general. If you’re going to hate female protagonists for hating their town/being miserable in their town, then don’t you dare go and listen to anything pop punk because that is a genre of music made of boys hating their towns and wanting out to the point where it’s a giant meme. So yeah, let Emmaline King hate the fact that she’s a young teen and being suddenly uprooted to a new town because of her mom’s career. You’re allowed to be angry about it – having to start over during your crucial years. That said, an old friend invites her to a carnival and she sees a cute boy. One thing leads to another and boom, he’s passing a curse onto her. Not your typical teen hookup to the say the least.

What Questell does extremely well is demonstrate how mundane carnival life is. They have to unpack, repack, set up, take down, think about where to place things where they can get the most money, how to rig the games, how to pass time between shows, how insular the community can be. She takes this extraordinary setting and tones it down which showcases just how extraordinary the feats they accomplish are, how terrible the weight of the curse can be. Everything is just this beautiful balance of the good and the bad, the extraordinary and the ordinary, true love and true youth.

And with that, true love and true youth, comes my one big fault of the book that knocked it down from 4-5 stars to 3 ½. Emmaline and Ben juxtaposed with Sidney and the love of his life – “true love” versus “true youth.” Emmaline and Ben are both young and they’ve only known each other for the duration of Emmaline’s tenure with the carnival. What, a handful of months? But, they are in True Love. Not even 18 or 21 or 25 but in True Love. And while I don’t doubt that can happen, I do dislike that it’s pushed through so thoroughly. On the other hand, we have True Youth with Sidney and [spoiler]’s relationship when they were younger and that’s one I absolutely loved. Sidney and [spoiler] have the relationship that impacts so much stronger than Emmaline and Ben because it’s so bittersweet. It’s the relationship of True Youth, of being in love and being young and with all of the brash reactions and decisions youth brings. It’s a love that some can idealize to their own detriment, it’s a love that can’t truly be forgotten with hurts that go too deep thanks to the lack of controlled forethought present in still developing brains. This is the love I loved. This was the ending that stuck with me.

By A Charm and A Curse by Jaime Questell is a solid young adult book that holds true to its title in weaving together both the bitter and the sweet in every aspect. Definitely looking forward to picking up future books by the author!

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Pros:
 It was a smooth, fast-paced read;
 The author’s writing was quite addicting and kept me hooked until the end;
 The carnival was well developed and vibrant, with many different characters with their own stories to make it alive;
 The concept itself (the curse and the boy/girl in the box around which everything hinges) was imaginative and pretty brilliant.

Cons:
The book suffered from the lack of a true, multifaceted antagonist: the villains are plain, one-dimensional "bad guys";
 There were many interesting characters whose backstory I would have wished to read more about (Sydney above all, I had a soft spot for him) and tons of side plots that were either abandoned or closed without blinking;
 The ending is too rushed and breaking the curse seemed a bit too easy and ‘run-of-the-mill’ to me;
 The insta-love between Ben and Emma was the nail in the coffin.

All in all, it was a fast, entertaining ride with an enormous potential that, sadly, was unexploited. Such a pity!

Musings:

The lore of the circus will never stop reeling me in. It has never failed me. It doesn’t fail me here. By a Charm and a Curse is magical, unexpectedly heart pounding, and full of the promise of love.

What I Loved:

An honest description of what it would like to be a tin man. I hadn’t thought about how the tin man from the wizard of oz would actually feel like. Being metal and hard and lacking warmth especially with the lack of heartbeat. Living through the mind of someone experiencing that sort of lacking bodily is intense and so achingly sad. It makes me see the tin man in a totally different light.

Crazy brothers. There is a set of brothers in this novel that do some intense acrobatics because they are protected by the charm and can’t get hurt. I don’t like them, but boy do I wish I could see them in action in real life.

A question of morality. Passing on the Curse takes a person completely away from their family and life before to live the life of a cold and almost dead doll like thing. Would you pass on a Curse like this if it was the only way to be free of it? Or would you live with it if only so others could be free?

A protective mother. The mother of the boy Emmaline falls for is as protective of him as my mother is of me. That is a rare gem in a novel and I am all the happier for it.

It’s a carnival. What more could I want from a novel then for it to be set in the mystique of a carnival. No matter what there is always some beautiful description to behold and that’s all part of what I love so much about this novel!

Final thoughts:

By a charm and a Curse will make you think twice before you go kissing that guy you just met a few hours ago. It’s a magical adventure that all Circus lovers will come to enjoy!

If I could relate this book to something that I know people enjoy, I would relate it to The Night Circus. I really felt like I was reading a YA version of that book and that was something that I really enjoyed about it! There was a curse, a traveling circus, a romance- almost exactly like The Night Circus, right? It was so much fun and definitely a little dark feeling at times, which I really enjoyed.

This isn’t a bad book. It has a cool premise and kind of a unique setting. Unfortunately, I was rather underwhelmed by the execution of it all. There was nothing new, original, or even engrossing about the story.

Side note:
I have read both The Night Circus and Caraval, both of which I have heard this book be compared to. Apart from the similar setting, I don’t really think this has anything in common with either of the two but to give you an idea of my reading taste: I adored and reread The Night Circus, while I want to take a star off of my 3-star Caraval review every time I think about it. Now on to the actual review.

This book follows Emma who is tricked into staying with a travelling Carnival by a boy, who transfers his curse to her with a kiss. Everything up to there is in the synopsis, everything from there is more or less predictable.
My main issue with this book is the characters. While I did kind of like them, I felt they had not depth at all what had me stop caring for them at some point. Which was the point when I started to feel that not only wasn’t there much happening but this all didn’t really make a lot of sense other than fulfilling a bunch of clichés.

A cursed kiss and a magical carnival told in a more modern day setting than other circus type novels, this may have been better if I hadn’t read a lot of YA before. Unfortunately it all feels very familiar and the characters are a bit flat and stereotypical.

The carnival itself is developed well, and the story itself is reasonably well written. It’s colourful and full of a character all of its own, I just wish the same could be applied to the protagonists. This is told by both Ben and Emma, and unfortunately I couldn’t get invested in either of them. They’re rather one dimensional with no emotional depth, and the instalove just finished it off for me. It’s something I find rather lazy in YA writing, when there’s no backstory to explain why two people are suddenly so into each other after just meeting. I want my protagonists to at least put up some struggle or resistance before declaring undying ‘true love’, and I lost interest quite quickly because of the obvious plot here. In particular I couldn’t gel with Emma. She comes across as very naive and immature, the way it’s written I honestly thought she was younger than she is for most of the novel. This meant she couldn’t really hold the story well for me, and there’s little chance for any kind of character development because the novel is so short.

The secondary characters are a little more entertaining, but again, the short novel length means there’s too many missed opportunities to expand and develop them. The ending was also rushed, and s little underwhelming.

There’s potential here for something a little more unique, if only the author has thought a little more outside the box and moved away from the obvious tropes of the genre.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

This for me was a case of interesting premise but boring execution. I can’t say it was a bad book, but this reader was just meh about the whole thing really.

Carnivals/Circuses with hints of a magic are a recent favourite of mine. So the premise of this book caught my attention right away. Teenager Emma has gone to the carnival with her friend. Emma across as likeable from the tone of the writing. She’s more fascinated by the artwork murals she spots than making out with cute boys like her friend Juliet.

A strange encounter for Emma when a weird boy gives her a coin. She and Juliet find themselves trying the fortune teller – The Boy in The Box. Emma soon finds herself alone. And shortly later hanging out with the Boy in the Box. And going on the Ferris wheel with him, drinking a bottle wine provided by the boy, kissing the weird boy and falling off said Ferris wheel.

When she wakes up Emma finds herself unable to feel anything and is shocked to discover she has been cursed. The Boy in the Box, Sidney, tricked her into taking his curse which can only be taken away with a kiss. She can try and get someone else to drink the mysterious wine and kiss them and shove them off the Ferris wheel.

Naturally, Emma is completely freaked and completely furious. (Who wouldn’t be?) Her reaction to the sudden change in her life is well written and completely believable as she realises her whole life is changed. She can’t go home, she has to stay with the Carnival while she is under the curse. The curse is a little more complex than first it seems but like anyone in this situation, there’s only so much information you can take in.

The Carnival people turn out to be pretty awesome (with a few exceptions of course) but most of the supporting cast were fantastic. The other acts who were around Emma’s age start to become real friends and help her deal with the situation. There are a few people who are absolute assholes and creepy (who turn out to be the baddies of the story).

None of this was too bad. It was really unique and interesting and kept me wanting to know what was going to happen. I like Emma as a character and I loved the supporting characters. What really spoiled this book for me was the romance.

Dual narrated the novel is from the point of view of Emma and Benjamin, one of the carnival workers who strikes a friendship with Emma which quickly becomes something more. Initially when we’re introduced to Benjamin it appears he’s working with the carnival along with his cousin both are hoping to save enough money to leave and start their own lives. But as soon as Emma comes into the picture he’s fascinated. Ben’s mother Audrey who also works at the carnival is livid about the idea of him hanging out with Emma who is now trying to get used to her new role as The Girl in the Box. Though the reasons for Audrey’s unnatural dislike and distrust of Emma become clearer later in the novel it just seems weird.

Of course being teenagers who are in insta-love they completely ignore the warnings about the two of them being together. The curse is a little more complex than Emma first realises and things are happening at the carnival, accidents are occurring that haven’t happened before and Emma is getting the blame. There’s a mystery to solve as to why all going back to the origins of how the curse came into being in the first place.

The novel is well written and the plot is interesting enough to want to know what’s going on but the romance between Ben and Emma is just so eye rolling it spoiled the whole book for me really. Even when they finally figure out what’s going on and what to do about it.

Good idea, but in the end just not for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Entangled Publishing LLC for approving my request to view the title.

I received an e-copy of this book from NetGalley for reviewing purposes. I am incredibly drawn to stories set in a carnival setting, and upon reading the description of the story I was very intrigued. It’s overall a smooth read, and I greatly appreciated the dual perspective of the story as I feel that getting multiple POVs really enriched the experience. I would certainly recommend this story to some of the older students I work with.

I received this free from #netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

OMG! I loved this story. I love a great Carnival book. I can not pass one up when I see it.

This book has a dual perspective of 2 characters. Ben and Emma. You will hear the story from them but we do have some side characters that I really enjoyed. There are not disappointments on my end about this book. You have all the thrills and dangerous acts of a great circus but the secret that is being hide is the story that captivated me. What is this secret, you ask? Well its a curse but if you wish to find out what is happening, I would highly recommend reading this book. I do not want to spoil the story. It will keep you on edge like it did me. I truly loved it.

I am a sucker for stories set in and around the circus, carnival, fair, and the like, mostly because I enjoy visiting them so much in real life. There’s just something almost magical about them, even when they’re not actually magical, right? Well, the Carnival Fantastic in By a Charm and a Curse has the excitement and lure of a typical carnival, coupled with actual magic: the festival is held together by, you guessed, a charm and a curse! It was a really neat concept, with a charm that kept the carnival members free from harm while working and also keeps them from aging past about 20 years old. Of course there’s also the downside, that nasty curse that the Person in the Box is required to suffer in order to keep the charm going.

I really enjoyed reading this story, it was magical like I wanted, with characters you root for and a sweet romance. I also loved the idea that we can each decide for ourselves what “home” means, and that it can be not just a place, but a person or group of people. It’s something that we don’t often think about, I’d wager, but following the characters to this conclusion reminded me that home should equal love, and if that’s not what you find in your physical home-space, you should go out and grab it somewhere else.

I’d recommend this to fans of stories centered around the circus/carnival, as well as fans of sweet romance, stories told from dual perspectives, and finding hints of magic in our everyday world. Thanks to Jaime Questell for sharing her story with us, and to Entangled Teen for letting me take part in this tour!

Rating: 4 magical stars!

*Disclosure: I received an early e-copy of this book from the publisher, but my honest rating and review was not required in order to receive it.