I know Caraval can be magical and romantic and wonderful, but the spells it casts aren’t easily shaken off, and half the time I don’t even think people realise they have been bewitched.

The air was full of salt and secrets.

The air tasted like wonder. Like candied butterfly wings caught in sugared spiderwebs, and drunken peaches coated in luck.

Every story has four parts - the beginning, the middle, the almost ending, and the true ending.

His mouth was crashing against hers. He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.

So,’ she said cautiously, 'is all this your way of telling me you’re the villain?’His chuckle was dark. 'I’m definitely not the hero.’'I already knew that,’ Tella said. 'It’s my story, so clearly I’m the hero.

As fantastical as Caraval might feel, the next five nights are very real.

Dante had wings. And, holy mother of saints, they were beautiful-soulless jet-black with midnight-blue veins, the color of lost wishes and fallen stardust.

As beguiling as the church of Legend was, Tella imagined it had Legend all wrong. Caraval might have been extreme in all of its splendor, but she didn't think he was.