The Book of Speculation

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book free from First reads. After reading the description I was very excited to read this book. Every website that I went to, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. etc. kept saying that if you liked The Night Circus then you would love this book. I loved reading The Night Circus, so if this was anything like it, I knew I would enjoy it. To me, the characters were predictable, and it just didn't have the excitement that The Night Circus had. Now with that being said, I did enjoy the book, I did have to remind myself that this was not The Night Circus, and I needed to stop comparing the two. Once I did that, the book was pretty good.

Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. It seems that all the women in his family dies’ on the same day in the month of July. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards, and is acting odd as the day approaches. Simon is in search of a way to break this curse. Then one day an old package arrives with a book in it. While Simon is reading it, he notices that his grandmother’s name is in this book. He starts to wonder about it.
The book does do flashbacks, which I enjoy most of the time in books. This book also had some dark magic in it, mermaids, and twist and turns. For me the book did slow down a bit towards the middle of the book, then picked up again, and at the end of the book, I don’t feel that all questions were answered. Maybe the author is growing to write a sequel to this book. I do feel that the author, Erika Swyler, is a very good storyteller. I have never heard of her before this book, if she writes more books, I would certainly read them.
This is a book that you would either love it, or not. I myself liked it.




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