Review: Wonder Show

Book Title/Author: Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby
Publication Date/Publisher: March 20, 2012/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Series: No
Source and Format: Library e-book
Rating: 3.99999 stars

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.

I love a circus setting! In Wonder Show, we stick to one part of the circus – the freak show tent. There is a strong man, conjoined twins, a bearded lady, a fat lady,  and a lady with no arms who throws knives with her feet, to name a few.

I really liked that we get chapters from the “freaks” to learn more about them, and how their individual relationships with Portia play out. I like the very real fear that Mister made me feel – creepy older man with a house full of young girls? You know that’s not going to end well.

I like music as much (or possibly more) as the next person, though most of what I like is not liked well by anyone else. Still, Wonder Show inspired me to create a mini-playlist, but I can’t get it to embed for whatever reason. So videos it is.

 

 

And finally, a great piece of advice:

My treat, darling. Bad luck for a girl to pay for her first lipstick. It’s like the tarot cards. You can’t buy them for yourself. You can’t pay for something powerful.