Moody Al Al itibaren Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, India
Continuing my streak of reading overhyped novels that are disappointments for all the wrong reasons. Water for Elephants. A book about love at first sight and your quintessential story on cheating on significant others in a world revolving around a circus train. Also likes to mention breasts and other related body parts with excessive detail. Read it for that reason only. What I expected more than a romance was a story about the bizarre and wacky things that make up circus life, the kind of stuff you can just imagine (yes, I know, stereotypical) or that maybe even have some kind of basis in reality, like so much of what is in this novel. It's just a shame that not enough of that gets fleshed out the way only select characters do, like Rosie and Walter. And there's not nearly enough going on between other characters that doesn't directly involve the love triangle going on in the story. I'm fine with the love triangle, but I wasn't expecting it to dominate over all else. Once you get over the disappointment of not finding out more about the circus itself, you may appreciate it for the naïve love story it contains, featuring the big bad evil husband and the 23 year old virgin that can do no wrong. Very quick read, and no real substance to it. Overall a small disappointment, not helped at all by all the positive hype out there that feels misplaced to me.