“The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.”
Few books capture the magic of storytelling quite like The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern’s enchanting novel blends a mystery travelling circus, a generations-old magical rivalry, and a slow-burning romance to create a reading experience that feels utterly dreamlike. But what do you read when you’ve finished The Night Circus and aren’t quite ready to leave that world behind? If you’re looking for books like The Night Circus, there are plenty of novels that offer a similar mix of magic, mystery, romance, and beautifully atmospheric storytelling. From fantastical worlds filled with impossible wonders to stories where magic comes with a dangerous price, these books should appeal to anyone who fell under Morgenstern’s spell.
The Night Circus Summary
The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque de Reves, and is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway – a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.
Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love – a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Kicking off our list of books like The Night Circus with another one of Erin Morgenstern’s best books, The Starless Sea opens with Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a graduate student in Vermont, discovering a mysterious book. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues that lead him to an ancient library hidden below the Earth’s surface.
What Zachary discovers in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians – it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and stories whispered by the dead. Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose – both the mysterious book and his own life.
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab
France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever – and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins an extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman discovers how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly three hundred years, Addie happens upon a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.
The Once And Future Witches – Alix E. Harrow
In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it in the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters – James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna – join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote – and perhaps not even to live – the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
Check Out The Best Books About Witches And Witchcraft
Caraval (Caraval #1) – Stephanie Garber
Scarlett has never left the tiny island where she and her beloved sister, Tella, live with their cruel and powerful father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval, the far-away, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show, are over. But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped.
Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But whether Caraval is real or not, she must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over, and her sister vanishes forever.
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The Ten Thousand Doors Of January – Alix E. Harrow
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr Locke, she feels little different from the artefacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own. Another magical Alix E. Harrow book and one of the best novels like The Night Circus, this spellbinding debut is a lush tale of impossible journeys, unforgettable love, and the enduring power of stories.
The Golem And The Jinni – Helene Wecker
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic, created to be the wife of a man who dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbour in 1899. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.
Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soulmates with a mysterious connection. Marvellous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker’s debut novel weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction, and magical fable in one of the most inventive and unforgettable books like The Night Circus.
The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo
In a shabby house in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers she is hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position. What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Perez – who will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favour.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisitor’s wrath.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Strange & Norrell #1) – Susanna Clarke
The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation’s past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through this country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet Norrell is soon challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice, Jonathan Strange.
Young, handsome, and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsession and secret dabblings with dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.
The Night Tiger – Yangsze Choo
When eleven-year-old Ren’s master dies, he makes one last request of his Chinese houseboy: that Ren find his severed finger, lost years ago in an accident, and reunite it with his body. Ren has 49 days, or else his master’s soul will be unable to find rest. Ji Lin always wanted to be a doctor, but as a girl in 1930s Malaysia, an apprentice dressmaker is a more suitable occupation. She also moonlights as a dancehall girl to help pay off her beloved mother’s Mahjong debts.
One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir: a severed finger. As the 49 days tick down and a prowling tiger wreaks havoc on the town, Ji Lin and Ren’s lives intertwine in ways they couldn’t have imagined, similar to The Night Circus. Braided through with Chinese folklore and a tantalising mystery, The Night Tiger is propulsive and lushly written in its exploration of colonialism and independence, ancient superstitions and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and first love.
The Book Of Living Secrets – Madeline Roux
No matter how different best friends Adelle and Connie are, one thing they’ve always had in common is their love of a little-known gothic romance novel called Moira. So when the girls are tempted by a mysterious stranger to enter the world of the book, they hardly suspect it will work. But suddenly they are in the world of Moira, living among characters they’ve obsessed over for years.
Except, all is not as they remembered it. The world has been turned upside down: The lavish balls and star-crossed love affairs are now interlaced with unspeakable horrors. The girls realise that something dark is lurking behind a foray into fiction – and they will need to rewrite their own arcs if they hope to escape this nightmare with their lives.
The Lost Apothecary – Sarah Penner
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose – selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her newest patron turns out to be a twenty-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardises Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the River Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to discover she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders”. As she widens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate – and not everyone will survive.
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Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house – a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
