The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern
★ Top 25 book of 2011 · #22 on Best Books of 2011
A mysterious circus appears overnight and opens only after dark. Inside its striped tents, two young magicians, Celia and Marco, are bound to a deadly contest of imagination, even as they fall in love.
Best for: Lovers of lush, magical romance and atmospheric, sensory storytelling
The Night Circus is #22 on BookWard's Best Books of 2011, out of 53 2011 books that cleared our data bar.
What The Night Circus is about
A circus appears one day with no warning and no announcement, its tents striped in black and white. Le Cirque des Rêves opens only after dark, and that alone makes it feel like a place apart from the ordinary world.
Behind the scenes, two young magicians, Celia and Marco, are bound to a contest they have been trained for since childhood by mercurial instructors. The circus is their stage, and only one of them can be left standing. Then they fall in love, against their own wishes, and something as small as a touch makes the lights flicker and the air grow warm. The game still has to play out, and the performers and patrons around them have a great deal at stake. The prose is rich and seductive, and the mood is dreamy, romantic and full of wonder, with love set against rivalry and fate against choice.
The Night Circus on the Best Books of 2011
The Night Circus came out in 2011. Of the 53 books first published in 2011 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #22 on our Best Books of 2011 list.
Why it made the list: 781 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (68 ratings); 23 are reading it right now. The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 2011 list
- Insurgent Veronica Roth, #20
- Fifty Shades Darker E. L. James, #21
- Wool Hugh Howey, #23
- The Secret of the Nagas Amish Tripathi, #24
See all Best Books of 2011 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 2010 Best Books of 2012.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 661 want to read it, 23 are reading it now and 97 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 4.1 out of 5 from 68 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 62 | 55% |
| Reader love | 55 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 53 | 20% |
Questions about The Night Circus
When was The Night Circus published?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was first published in 2011.
Was The Night Circus one of the best books of 2011?
The Night Circus is #22 on BookWard's Best Books of 2011, out of 53 2011 books that cleared our data bar. 781 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (68 ratings); 23 are reading it right now.
Why is The Night Circus on the Best Books of 2011 list?
781 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (68 ratings); 23 are reading it right now.
More of the best books of 2011
- Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari, #1
- The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller, #2
- Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman, #3
- Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson, #4
- The Son of Neptune Rick Riordan, #5
- The Mark of Athena Rick Riordan, #6
See the full Best Books of 2011, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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