Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - Review

**A note on my notes: This review is spoiler free.**

"Life is the most spectacular show on earth." 

I saw the movie adaptation when it first came out, and I loved it. The movie is actually what inspired to me pick up the book, which I did shortly after. It's been sitting on my shelf, gathering dust, ever since. I finally got around to reading it last week, and my love for the story was renewed.

The novel follows an about-to-graduate college student in the time of the Great Depression. Suddenly, Jacob finds himself all alone in the world and is forced to start afresh with absolutely nothing. Seeking a new beginning, he hops aboard a train speeding past him, which unknown to him at the time, happened to house a travelling show. Jacob soon earns a place in the circus, and the novel follows his adventure.

The Good
As I said earlier, I really enjoyed this book. I thought the character development was incredible and the plot was extremely interesting. The author committed over four months of research for this novel, and I think that effort really shows in the writing - it's easy to believe that the fictional tale is actually truth because of how realistic the situation is described to be.
The story is told from the perspective of Jacob both as an old man in a nursing home as he reflects and remembers his life in the circus. I think this way of telling the story worked perfectly and I found myself often connecting more to the story when the elderly Jacob was talking about being an old man.
I loved the ending. I thought it was beautiful, wonderful and all things good.

The Bad
I found the beginning of the novel was pretty slow. Not a lot of relevant plot points occur until just before halfway, as the beginning contains a lot of character and world building, which as a historical fiction novel, I understand is important. However, this slowness didn't really bother me because I had seen the movie and knew what was going to happen and what I had to look forward to.
There were a few scenes that I think actually translated the meaning better in the film than in the book, which is rare. Because of this, I knew how touching certain scenes and situations were as I had seen the movie prior to reading, but if you haven't then you might not be as touched. That's not to say that the book is unemotional or anything like that, because it's still a very emotional tale, I just found the movie sometimes expressed that emotion more poetically/beautifully.

The Recommendation
If you haven't seen the movie, I would definitely recommend watching it soon after finishing the book, because the story really is touching and the movie sometimes portrayed the emotional messages a bit better/clearer. If you're interested in the inner workings of historical travelling shows, I would recommend that you read Water for Elephants. If you have someone who is toward the end of their life cycle, like a grandparent or someone of similar old age, I would 100% recommend that you read this book, because it was really eye-opening for me in that regard.

Overall, I loved this book and while I won't be reading it again any time soon, the story and its message will stay with me for a very long time.

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You can find out more about Water for Elephants here.