The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern

Title: The Starless Sea
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Genre/ issues: Fantasy. The power of stories.

“We are all star dust and stories.”
I love stories about stories. Books which honour the role of stories in our lives, that treasure narratives and that unapologetically love words? They’re my favourite types of books. This one, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, is utterly wonderful. Honouring then stories that have come before it with sweet little references to Narnia, the Potterverae, and a Lev Grossman vibe that’s unmistakeable, but simultaneously creating its own unique fantasy in which a subterranean library of all stories ever told, past present and future, is curated and tended by a secret society … can you see why I love it?

Morgenstern books

I’ve read some wholly excellent books this year, and The Starless Sea ranks up there with the best of them. A friend from work loaned it to me, after we’d had a chat about books we loved, and I gave her another of my faves to read. I confessed that I was a dog-earer, but promised to not do so to her book, and she said that she didn’t mind at all as she did the same! It made me happy to find a kindred spirit. As I read, though, and marked pages that touched me deeply, I realised that I wanted to keep this copy with all its folded corners, so I ordered her a fresh new copy – only to find out that she’d done the same thing for the book I had loaned her!

I’m so glad to have added it to my story, to have made a connection with another book soul, and to be a part of the journey of The Starless Sea through the world. If you’ve not read this, do so – and grab The Night Circus while you’re at it, it’s similarly brilliant. 

#TamaraReads #2020readingchallenge 15/52

Happy reading,