Water For Elephants

I probably shouldn't have read another book about a circus so close on the heels of The Night Circus. There was just no way it could live up to that magical story. Which isn't to say that this book is bad.

Although I do think it lacked that little something special that would make it memorable. The book was fine, and I enjoyed it. It's just not one that I'm going to be returning to or thinking about for much longer.

The story is pretty straightforward. A man drops out of vet school when his parents die and leave him penniless. He joins a struggling circus where he cares for the animals and falls in love with a performer who's married to an abusive man. Of course, he's the only one in the circus who cares that her husband is a complete jerk. They bond over an elephant who only speaks Polish and ultimately live happily ever after. Except that the entire story is told retroactively from the a very sad, lonely retirement home.

That summary is probably not entirely fair to the book. But there's a lot of cruelty that's hard to read. And beyond that there just wasn't anything that stood out to me. There was nothing that I particularly disliked, just nothing that I particularly liked either.

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