Teaser Review # 2

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As I explained in a previous blog post, I am a Junior Reviewer for the Page Turners blog. As I only manage to review a handful of books each month, I've decided they will all be featured on the Page Turners blog versus having some of them posted here. I will still be posting blogs here, such as Showcase Sunday and other memes or random posts I feel like. But what I plan to do is post a "Teaser Review," which will be posted here to let you know when a review of mine is up on the Page Turners blog. I'm not asking that anyone follow their blog, (even though it is very worthy of their followers) especially since I will only be posting reviews versus any other posts I make here. I just wanted to make sure anyone who wanted to read my reviews knows where to find them. :)

Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby

Published: March 20th, 2012

Won from Goodreads First Reads!

Description from Goodreads:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze! 

But perhaps the strangest act of Mosco’s display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy’s Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits. He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave.
Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally, seeking answers about her father’s disappearance. Will she find him before Mister finds her? It’s a story for the ages, and like everyone who enters the Wonder Show, Portia will never be the same.

A fantastic aspect of this story is the descriptions Barnaby uses for the settings, the characters, and the scenes in general. Portia feels like a real person to me, and her interactions feel genuine and concrete, even though the idea of a young girl running away from an orphanage and joining up with a circus always seems a little improbably, I really believed Portia’s efforts and decisions in everything she does. Portia is a wall flower, and she observes all that is around her even when she should be focusing on what’s she’s doing. She is obsessed with the idea of stories and having that perfect audience, yet the way she sees the people in the circus, the public who visit the show, and her family, it seems that what Portia is looking for is a show of her own, with her as the audience. This is why the title really works for me for this story. You associate Wonder Show to the circus she becomes a part of, yet I believe the Wonder Show is the types of experiences Portia encounters and how she handles them.

To read more, check out my full review at the Page Turners Blog!

Happy Reading!