REVIEW - CARNIVAL FANTASTICO BY ANGELA MONTOYA

  

Title: Carnival Fantastico
Author: Angela Montoya
Publisher: Bonnier Books, Ink Road
Genre: Teens & YA
Release Date: 3rd February 2026

BLURB
An unputdownable romantasy following a young woman posing as fortune-teller at a magical traveling carnival, where the handsome boy who once broke her heart resurfaces and warns her that the carnival is more sinister than it appears.

Welcome to the Carnival Fantástico, a spectacle of magic and mischief, and the perfect haven for a runaway. Using her tricks and razor-sharp wit, Esmeralda becomes the carnival’s resident fortune-teller, aiming for the lead role in the Big Top Show. Success would mean freedom from her former employer, the commander of the King’s army.

Ignacio has defected from the army and is on the hunt for evidence of his father’s corruption. But the last thing he expects to find on his father’s trail of lies is the only girl he’s ever loved, spinning false fortunes at a traveling carnival.

Perhaps fortune has thrown them together for a reason. They strike a deal: she’ll help him expose his father if he helps her secure the main act. But old feelings don’t die easily, and the commander’s secret isn’t the only thing they’ll need to confront. 

REVIEW
There are various covers for this book and they are similar though have subtle difference. I really like them all and for a change my favourite cover is the UK one!! 
I adore the purple shades and the detail on the cover, it really draws you in and makes you want to learn more, rather like the Carnival Fantastico does to its patrons!

The Carnival is a great place for those that can afford it to escape the woes of the world which has been at war for many years and where conformity is expected. The Carnival is exempt from the laws of the land and has safe passage wherever it travels. The Carnival employs its own security men called Ratas, so it doesn’t need any outside help or interference. The more important and special the guests are made to feel the merrier they will be and therefore liable to spend more.

Once you have paid the entrance fee, you enter the magical Carnival and if you are not already in costume you visit the tailor for your disguise. The tailor seems to come up with an extremely appropriate mask/costume for everyone which fits their job or characteristics so well. 
You can purchase candy floss that is a different flavour with each bite you take!

The Carnival Fantastico does have some very old magic but it also has the “slight of hand”, mischief, mystique and “cons” of the circus/carnival too. An example of this is the Strong Arm game where you pay to play and use a hammer to hit a lever to see if you can make the bell ring. This of course plays into the male ego and them wanting to show off to their friends or dates! Ramon is the performer that runs this game and allows a male to win and ring the bell which of course boosts their ego so Ramon loudly congratulates the male saying things like “You must be blessed by magic, Senor, for it is rare for one to be mighty enough to make the bell sing” He then gets more money from the individual by encouraging them to chance their luck at ringing the bell a second time. Something that never happens!

The main female character, Esmeralda Montero joined the Carnival when she ran away from her life as an errand runner for the Commander of the Kings Army, but she wasn’t only running away from that life and her job, she was also running away from a broken relationship.

Esmeralda had to agree to the Carnival Rules,
1. Earn your keep.
2. Always smile.
3. Never mix or mingle with officers of the law.
4. Do not let the ringmaster catch you stealing from guests. 
5. You must stay for the entirety of one year.
6. Leave promptly, with no fuss, once your year is up.
7. Most importantly: The show, no matter what circumstance may arise, must always go on.

As a fortune teller had recently left that is the job that Esmeralda was given. Esmeralda is a fortune teller going by the name of La Paloma Blanca and has her own rather ramshackle wagon on the outer third ring of the Carnival with the other “third ringers” her act isn’t considered special enough for the big top or the inner more popular circles. Esmeralda uses the special cards that appear in her wagon nightly for her to use. The cards are very ornate and have the bell-shaped flowers associated with the Carnival on the back of them along with her stage name La Paloma Blanca Fortune Teller Extraordinaire. The flowers on the cards move, they flutter and sway, bumble bees whizz on and off the cards. Esmeralda also smells something like jasmine emanating from the flowers too! When La Paloma Blanca flicks over a card the illustrations shift and continue to move and transform until the person whom she is giving a reading to touches their fingertips to the iridescent ink on the cards. Once this happens the ink forms into a depiction of the persons deepest hopes and dreams and La Paloma Blanca interprets them for the person. Being in the outer third ring which is quieter and is further from the stronger magic around the inner circles, Esmeralda doesn’t always wait for business to come to her she has to walk around and search out potential people to do tarot readings for. Esmerald also supplements her tarot income by being somewhat light fingered and stealing trinkets from those attending the Carnival. 
Though Esmeralda has relative safety from the Commander and the Army whilst in the Carnival but her time at the Carnival is running out as a performer can only stay with the carnival for 12months. The only way to stay on longer is to go into “The Running” which is the term given to those who wish to try out to become the next big act in the big top. If she can make it into the big top she’ll also earn a lot more money and have money to get far away from the Commander of the Kings Army when her time at the Carnival ends.

When the very successful lead act, Melanie the Marionette suddenly disappears, there’s initially confusion as to where she has gone and then as usual with the Carnival when someone leaves it just carries on, though with no lead act it means that the Running can and will start again. To be in the running you have to be invited by the Ringmaster and owner of the Carnival, Angel Veracruz a mysterious, ageless man who seems to pop up out of thin air and know everything that is going on in the Carnival.

The main male character is Ignacio Oliveira, son of the Commander of the Kings Army. Ignacio was expected to join the army by his father and wasn’t really given a choice, however he plans on running away with the girl he loves until when he gets to their meeting point she isn’t there and has left him a rather brutal break up letter. Feeling heart broken he goes off into training and becomes a respected member of the army. It is when he sees something not quite right during a battle, innocents being killed and he discovers that the King and his father the Commander of the Kings Army are not being truthful about the war they are waging that he defects and joins the resistance army and attempts to discover evidence as to exactly what his father and his army are doing. When Ignacio breaks into his father’s secret office and finds a flyer for Carnival Fantastico with a message written in unusual purple ink that is begging his father to meet up at the Carnival that he decides that’s where the answers to his questions may lie. It also just so happens that the Carnival is nearby at Rio Norte so he heads straight there, not really knowing what to expect, he definitely doesn’t expect to quite literally bump into Esmerald Montero the one who broke his heart so many years ago.

Theres a lot of back and forth between Ignacio and Esmeralda, she throws an egg at his head and has him arrested by the Ratas, put into a jail carriage where he is recognised as an army deserter by the carriage driver who is hoping for a large payment upon delivering him to jail. Ignacio however escapes and manages to chase the Carnival train which is on its way to its next stop and he not only gets onto the train he talks Angel Veracruz into letting him stay. Ignacio uses the cover story that he is chasing after the girl that broke his heart, Angel seems like a sucker for a love story and allows him to stay. What Ignacio doesn’t realise is just how darkly magical Carnival Fantastico is and how far Angel Veracruz will go to promote his Carnival.

Ignacio soon finds himself being part of Esmeralda’s great plans to compete in the running to become the next big top star attraction. They end up coming to an arrangement, she will help him find the evidence about his father and he will do everything to help her gain the big top spot. Poor Ignacio ends up dressed up being part of her act whether he wants to be or not. The Carnival promotes them as wronged/starcrossed lovers which of course the patrons love.

When those competing in the running start having “serious accidents” and Ignacio spots the famous purple ink swirling in the vicinity of the accident each time he tries to warn Esmeralda that there is something more sinister going on in the Carnival. However, Esmeralda is caught up in the rules of the Carnival and everyone knows no matter what the show must go on! The presence of the ink both at the Carnival and at his father’s secret office makes Ignacio all the more determined to find its source and its keeper. It soon becomes apparent that Ignacio’s father is very much in league with someone in the increasingly sinister, dangerous Carnival. 
There’s lots of lies and betrayal going on, as Ignacio and Esmeralda work together they discover each think it was the other that broke off their relationship. It doesn’t take long to work out it was interference from Ignacios father that caused the misunderstanding and broke the pair apart.

I can’t really say much more about the magic and its source within the Carnival other than with the help of an old fairy tale his mother told him Ignacio manages to put the pieces together. But can he live with what he learns about his father and the true circumstances of his mother’s death? Can Ignacio save Esmeralda as the Carnival begins to tear apart or will they have reunited and rekindled their love only to be torn apart again?

The Acts and Characters I loved were Camila & Pilar Sanchez the strong woman sisters! I thought it was brilliantly that the author had a strong woman act rather than a typical strong man act! I found the tailor fascinating, the way he so perfectly matches the character of the individual with the costume/mask he magically created. 
I absolutely adored Estefan the ostrich who went crazy for shiny things, a trait that Esmeralda utilised on more than one occasion. 
I also loved Gabriel, who joined the Carnival at the same time as Esmeralda. He is everyone’s friend, always looking out for his friends whether its building them something to make their acts better or being a shoulder to cry on. I enjoyed the way he could make what others would probably discard into something useful such as the wheelchair he made when disaster strikes one of the Acts.

Those I enjoyed hating were the Commander of the Kings Army, his selfishness, his part in the war, what had happened to his wife and the way he interfered in the relationship between Ignacio and Esmeralda. 
I’ll be honest I was wary of the Ringmaster/Owner of Carnival Fantastico Angel Veracruz from the beginning the way he just conveniently popped up out of thin air. The darkness that Angel Veracruz has created with his nonchalance attitude of no matter what befalls his Acts the show must go on and they are literally disposed of when they are no longer of use to him. I didn’t like the way he took Esmeralda’s trinket stash meaning she was even more tied into staying at the Carnival and even more reliant on competing in the running to become the next big top main attraction to earn money.

I thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie between the different Acts and people at Carnival Fantastico although there was always a dark undertone of the competition they were all in to make it to the Big Top. I adored the depiction of the different sides of the Carnival, the gritty hard work going on when there are no patrons around and then the glamour and magic when Carnival Fantastico was in full operating dazzling and delighting it patrons.

I really enjoyed all the magical elements both dark and light. I was enthralled with the sinister story behind the success stories of both Angel Veracruz and the Commander of the Kings Army and how their stories intertwined. I also thoroughly enjoyed how everything unravelled and started falling apart.

The descriptions within the book are so detailed you can easily visualise the scenes as they unfold. You literally feel like you are ring side in the Big Top watching the Sanchez Sisters perform their strong woman act. Gasping in a mixture of awe, shock and relief at the escape artist Nicola.

This book and its descriptions of the Acts brought back fond memories of visiting circuses to me the whole holding your breath as the trapeze artists perform. I would have loved watching Esmeralda’s aka La Paloma Blanca’s act with Ignacio aka La Paloma Amor! I would have been amazed at all the different exotic, extravagant costumes that were described in such brilliant detail in the book.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing reading the book were that I had loved it from the first page to the last! If you have read and loved Hotel Magnifique by Emily J Taylor and/or The Theatre Of Glass and Shadows by Anne Corlett then you will adore this book too.

Summing up, I highly recommend reading this one! It has so many carefully overlaid layers that are slowly revealed as you proceed through the book, it really keeps you reading. I found myself looking forward to my time reading yet at the same time dreading the book coming to an end! Carnival Fantastico is so well thought out, is really well written with detailed world building and amazing. Mostly adorable characters! There’s a sentence that sums up Carnival Fantastico perfectly and it’s a quote within the book but it is so fitting as it describes the magic within Carnival Fantastico perfectly "Magic as devious as it is wonderful" 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW - CONTROL ALTER DELETE BY KL. KETTLE

Described as HUNGER GAMES meets BLACK MIRROR - a speculative YA thriller, tackling themes of technology and power dynamics, for fans of Malorie Blackman, Louise O'Neill, READY PLAYER ONE and THE UPPER WORLD. 

  

Title: Control Alter Delete
Author: K.L. Kettle
Publisher: Little Tiger Group
Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Teens & YA
Release Date: 5th Febraury 2026

BLURB
What would you choose - a beautiful untrue life, or a broken true one?

Hal is living a fairy tale - almost. Thanks to tech genius Francis Knox and her company's pioneering work building the perfect World 2.0, the universe is available at a swipe, and Hal has everything she wants. (Except for her family, which fell apart after her dad's disappearance years ago.)

Except, perhaps, winning the notoriously competitive Knox Cup. That's a dream even World 2.0 can't fulfil, not when Hal doesn't have the funds to enter.

Then out of the blue Hal's guardian challenges her to prove herself, arranging for Hal to compete. It's an opportunity she can't waste. If she wins, she'll meet Francis Knox herself - then all of Hal's deepest, secret wishes might really come true. But as the competition progresses, Hal discovers decay hidden beneath the world's perfect veneer - and, as the cracks begin to grow, she is forced to make a choice about what it is she truly wants.

Goodreads Link 

REVIEW
It was the blurb that first attracted me to this book, but I have to say I did really like the cover, too, but when the significance of the bird featured on it is explained I loved it even more!

Control Alter Delete is a speculative YA thriller, tackling themes of technology and power. As the first line in the blurb says, What would you choose - a beautiful untrue life or a broken true one?

I loved the character of Halcyon Greene, nickname Bliss, called Hallie by her godfather, as well as being called Hal by friend, too. I could understand why Hal chose to live the way she did at the start of the book. With her father disappearing, then her mother having dementia and being taken away from her, it's no wonder she wanted to escape from her rather sad, lonely existence. At the beginning of the book, Hal was basically living in World 2.0, not really interacting with real life. World 2.0 is literally escapism at its best and worst all at the same time. Hal feels closer to her father in the games as he designed some of them. She also gets a buzz from the attention those watching give her. Though its a double-edged sword as the attention and interaction aren't always positive.

Her end goal for entering the Knox Cup was for the possibility of meeting Francis Knox, the creator of World 2.0 and the new updated World 3.0. However, she soon discovers that her parents were involved in the creation of World 2.0. Unfortunately its not as easy as her just asking them about it as her dad disappeared years ago, and her mother has frontal temporal dementia and has been whisked away to a hospital called 'the hotel of dreams' (which is ironic as no one dreams anymore) by her 'uncle'/godfather, Simon. Simon replaces Hal's mum with a computerised version, which he controls. Hal quickly becomes attached to, as it looks like her mum, sounds like, and acts like her mum. Simon controls this version of Hal's mum, as well as the real version that lays in a bed in the hotel of dreams. There are a few occasions where Simon threatens both versions of Hal's mum to get Hal to do what he wants. Simon can literally turn off or change the way that Hal's virtual mum interacts with Hal, and he threatens to completely turn it off on more than one occasion, leaving Hal devastated at just the thought of being totally without any version of her mum.

Hal and the majority of the people 'live' in this virtual world, never really interacting with each other, so when Simon suddenly starts visiting and then helps Hal with the money to enter the Knox Cup, she is a little curious as to what he wants from her, but she is so desperate to enter the Knox Cup she brushes off her concerns. Hal competes in the Knox Cup and looks for mysterious components hidden by her dad that could fix the virtual world that is falling apart and answer the increasing amount of questions about who actually created the world and the games within it, such as Altercation, Cosmic Explorer
Tumbleweed and Gauntlet. Hal discovers the truly dangerous, darker side of World 2.0, and what happens to those who disagree with Francis Knox? She becomes determined to bring the whole system down. She has a mysterious friend called Elpis/Go, whilst it is never fully explained who they are. I believe they were kind of an imaginary friend, whether they were created by her parents or Hal herself. Elpis/Go was sealed in a book by Hal's father when he said Hal was too old for them anymore. During the Knox Cup, Elpis/Go returns and helps Hal in the different games she has to take part in to try to win the cup. When teams have to be chosen, Hal is chosen by her ex and current Knox Cup champion Hunter.

It's quite a detailed, complex plot with interesting characters that choose to live in a virtual world that they perceive as a perfect world, preferring that than living in the world of reality. I found the book really well written with some things explained and other things left for you to come to your own conclusions on. Within the chapters, there are sections text/audio notifications in bubble style like you're looking at a phone, which add to the immersion feel of the book.

I loved the character of Halcyon Greene, nickname Bliss, called Hallie by her godfather, as well as being called Hal by friend, too. I could understand why Hal chose to live the way she did at the start of the book. With her father disappearing, then her mother having dementia and being taken away from her, it's no wonder she wanted to escape from her rather sad, lonely existence.

I loved some of the finer details in the book such as Altercation one if the games Hal's dad had designed that had a place called Trouble Time within it had a logo of a sunrise between two columns with a kingfisher in silhouette taking off from the centre of the sun. The kingfisher is known as the halcyon bird - aka Hal's name.
As her parents loved puzzles, Hals theory was that the logo was more than an 'in joke' and maybe a clue from her dad as to where he had gone & why. There's so many details that suddenly become huge clues to the answers Hal seeks in her attempts to first save World 2.0, and then when she decides to bring it all down. The ending of the book is sort of dream-like, quite cryptic, and has Hal giving sort of alternative endings as to what has happened that are open to your own interpretation as to what they mean. It wasn't what I was anticipating, I expected a more decisive, clean cut ending.

My immediate thoughts were, what a unique book, that it was such an alternate, strange, futuristic yet strangely believable world Hal lived in. did enjoy the book a lot, though I did find some parts such as the different endings a little confusing. I really enjoyed reading this one, even though my technical gaming knowledge isn't what it used to be.

Summing up, the book had some great characters and amazing world building. You quickly become absorbed by Hal's quest to find the hidden components and what they reveal about her parents. There's so much packed into this book, I honestly think it could have been a series or at least a duology, then the other characters back stories could have been explored more as well as the strange world they were all living/existing in. I personally think Control Alter Delete would make a really good book to film or TV series adaptation.