Blog Tour | The Spectaculars

Hello, thank you for reading my book review for The Spectaculars by Jodie Garnish. Thank you to Kaleidoscopic Tours and Usborne for having me!

The Greatest Showman meets Nevermoor, The Spectaculars is the enchanting new adventure series that combines magic, theatre and danger with a large pinch of starstuff…

Beyond the gateway, in the Hidden Peaks, live the Spectaculars – magical performers, with special powers gifted from the stars. They can levitate you out of your seat with a song, make a costume that will turn you invisible and create a snowstorm with a dance. When Harper joins The Spectaculars at their travelling boarding school, she can’t wait to learn all kinds of magic. But when the song of the Four Curses comes to life, and a terrifying creature threatens everything, she must use her new powers to save her school…

While dreams come true at the Wondria, nightmares might just be lurking in the wings.

Huge thank you to Kaleidoscopic Tours and Usborne for having me on The Spectaculars blog tour today!

I was really intrigued by the blurb of this novel, “The Greatest Showman meets Nevermoor” is quite a combination! They’re also two things I love so I was very excited to see how the author would combine them! It definitely draws inspiration from both of these areas. I enjoyed reading this book, it was an easy read which moved along at a quick pace.

This is a lovely book to read, it’s got a delightfully light feel to it, with a vibrancy and flare that a novel set in a magical theatre really has to have!

Garnish has created some excellent characters in this novel. Our main character Harper is brilliant, very practical and level headed. She struggles with feelings of being different and being an outsider which were handled very thoughtfully by the author. She makes friends with some lovely characters who give us a great group of adventurers to follow through the narrative.

I really liked the setting of a magical theatre, it felt different and quirky. The classes that the children attend are very interesting, and the novel does something different from the regular magical boarding school novels.

The only thing I would say about this novel is that it seemed a little all over the place at times. The author almost appeared to want to include too much in the novel, and as a result it felt like things didn’t really get fully explained or resolved. I felt that I could have done with a bit more explanation to really see how everything worked as a full narrative, especially the magic system, it felt a little thin in terms of description. I want to know more about The Smoke, and the event that led to magic leaving it, I was just left with so many questions!

Overall I really liked this novel, it’s a fun and adventurous fantasy romp! The characters are fun and the magic system is something a little different!

Huge thank you to Kaleidoscopic Book Tours and Usborne for having me on The Spectaculars blog tour.

Buy the book from Bookshop.org or Waterstones (both affiliate links)

• 
• 
• 
•