Review: Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr

Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr
Published: September 4, 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 320
My Rating:  2 of 5 stars

Synopsis: In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are offered up for sale. Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures--if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to try to live.

All Mallory knows of The City is that her father--and every other witch there--fled it for a life in exile in the human world. Instead of a typical teenage life full of friends and maybe even a little romance, Mallory scans quiet streets for threats, hides herself away, and trains to be lethal. She knows it's only a matter of time until a daimon finds her and her father, so she readies herself for the inevitable. While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence and danger that is the Carnival of Souls.

From Melissa Marr, bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series and "Graveminder," comes a brand-new tale of lush secrets, dark love, and the struggle to forge one's own destiny.

My Review: Well it certainly took me long enough to read this. I'm pretty sure I started this book around the beginning of September and I didn't finish it until last night. The beginning just wasn't grabbing my attention.

The first 100 pages was great and after that not so great. Around page 100 this book was pure cheese. When Kaleb was with Mallory he was so cheesy I almost couldn't take it.
"I'm moving tonight," she said.
"I'll come to you anywhere," he promised.
That one wasn't that bad but the next one almost made me want to close the book.
"What if it's too far?"
Kaleb laughed softly. "Nowhere is too far."
Keep in mind that these two characters don't know each other. Basically Kaleb comes into her house and declares his love for her even though he admits that he doesn't really know her. I am not a fan of instant love. I like to know how and why characters fall in love.

For me characters in books matter a lot. So as much as I liked the story what really ruined it for me was the characters. I could not stand Mallory. I just wanted someone to take her away and never let her see the light of day again. I did not like her relationship with Adam it was just too weird for me. The only thing I kind of liked about her was that she could shoot guns so she wasn't completely helpless. But when she actually faces two daimons they could have easily taken her if Adam hadn't shown up. Throughout most of the book she was completely clueless too. Thankfully this book was not told from only her POV.

I'm not really sure what to think of Aya. At some parts I liked her but whenever she was with Belias she turned into this sappy romantic even though she's supposed to be this fierce fighter. Honestly the only reason I kept reading was because I wanted to find out what Aya's secret was and when I found out a little more than halfway through the book I literally thought to myself ok so now why am I reading? I had to ask myself why I was still going to read it. That has never really happened to me before.

There other part that bothered me was how we were told that Kaleb and Zevi were curs but we were never shown that. I never got the feeling that either of them were low ranking in the daimon world. They seemed pretty fine except for the fact that they lived in a cave but it sounded like a pretty nice cave. I don't know I guess I expected more suffering and more of a struggle to get food. Also I wanted to know more about the land the witches cursed (I don't remember what it was called because it was talked about so little).

Despite all of my problems I did enjoy reading this book. Sure it wasn't my favorite thing to read but I still liked it. The story was unique and that's basically why I wanted to read this. I enjoyed Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series much more than this and I'd read many glowing reviews so maybe my expectations were too high.