The Ladies of The Secret Circus

Paris, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder-a world where women tame magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. But each daring feat has a cost. Bound to her family's strange and magical circus, it's the only world Cecile Cabot knows-until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a passionate love affair that could cost her everything.

Virginia, 2005: Lara Barnes is on top of the world-until her fiancé disappears on their wedding day. Desperate, her search for answers unexpectedly leads to her great-grandmother's journals and sweeps her into the story of a dark circus and a generational curse that has been claiming payment from the women in her family for generations.

Title: The Ladies of The Secret Circus

Author: Constance Sayers

Genre: Mystery Fantasy

Paperback: 448 pages

Publication Date: 03/23/2021

Publisher: Redhook

Language: English

ISBN: 0316493678

ISBN-13: 9780316493673

My Review

A magical circus of curiosities, family secrets, multiple timelines, and a dark, dark mystery will riddle readers till the end in this characteristic tale edging goth and horror elements.

Last year, I was fortunate to receive an early arc for Constance Sayers ‘A Witch in Time’ novel which granted me my first experience with the author’s writing. As a fan of timelines in stories, I enjoyed it quite a bit though there are noticeable differences between that novel and ‘The Ladies of The Secret Circus’. First off, the timeline segments in the previous novel were much longer, telling almost entire story entities in a flow picking up continuously back and forth as the novel progressed. In this new novel, the timelines are shorter and more easily manageable by content and they complement the main storyline more so as additions vs using it as a way of telling the entire tale.

‘The Ladies of The Secret Circus’ is structured with a main, contemporary thread that takes place in the years 2004 – 2006, set in the beautiful rolling hills of Kerrigan Falls, VA, and features the main protagonist named Lara Barnes who is about to get married to her longtime fiancée Todd Sutton and her mother Audrey, who is not in favor of their matrimony.

Premonitions of another timeline, featuring Lara as a young girl, tell that she is the chosen one and ‘the boy is not her destiny’ as a couple of strangers tell her so and appear to her throughout her youth.
When Lara’s fiancée disappears on the day of their wedding, a world comes crashing down for her, but it also opens an old case for Ben Archer, local police chief, of a man who disappeared in an almost identical way 30 years prior, with a car left on the side of the road by nearby Wickelow Forest.

As time passes and Lara moves on with her life restoring her historical home, her mother passes down an old, framed picture of a family heirloom, painted by the famous Emile Giroux during the Jazz Age in the 1920’ in Paris. Not being fond of the painting in particular but accepting the gift, it turns out that this might be a valuable, highly sought-after piece with 2 counterparts, featuring scenes from the elusive ‘Secret Circus’. As the strangers from the other timeline tell her to go to Paris to investigate with specialized antique dealers, she is presented with two diaries in connection to the painting, the ‘Secret Circus’ and her family history, in exchange for answers about her fiancée’s disappearance.

What happens in Paris changes the entire pace of the novel. What has thus far been laying the groundwork to this secret that has haunted the ‘Secret Circus’, the person who wrote the diaries and the painter Giroux and which has arched into Kerrigan Falls, is now after Lara in hauntingly mysterious ways filled with a chase through the streets of Paris, a murder mystery and Lara’s very close call to death. What ensues in this last part of the novel is so richly textured, grotesque, and brilliantly composed, it will have you glued to the pages into the night.

What I liked about this novel was the connection between a mystery that has happened so long ago in another place and withstood through the currents of time via a generational curse that needed to be broken today. And though it takes the main character traveling all the way to Paris, the mystery unfolds mainly in this picturesque town in VA. This leads me to mention, that Sayers does an amazing job in her descriptive writings of either places present as well as in the past. As a lover of the Paris cityscape with its beautiful landmarks, boulevards, cobblestone streets, cafés, and different arrondissements, it was the perfect presentation of the concrete and flair.

Unexpectedly to me, there was a really, really dark side to this novel and the story of that curse that goes somewhere along the lines of making deals with the devil. In an ever-lasting cycle of the damned, the characters in the diaries are afflicted to perform and suffer till the curse is lifted. Of course, there’s always someone at the helm of the strings that make it all go around. Some very obscure elements were part of that ‘Secret Circus’ to reach fantastical limits and hone them into the contemporary moments of Lara’s life. I thought that was very well done and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

I liked this novel even more so than Sayer’s first book. It flowed faster, the mystery was much greater laden with suspense and added up to a page-turner starting mid-way. What I’m not exactly sure about is what genre I would sort this novel in. It is certainly fantasy, but also contemporary, historical, and a murder mystery. If you enjoy books by Alma Katsu or Danielle Trussoni, then I think you will like this as well.

Enjoy.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

All opinions are my own.

Thank you.