I’m yet to read a book written by Julie that I haven’t loved and Circus of Mirrors was every inch as brilliant as her previous two novels.

Sent in Berlin over a span of decades, Circus of Mirrors follows Leni who is working as a cigarette girl at the Babylon Circus and her younger sister Annette.

The sisters have lost all their remaining family so are all each other have and have a very all consuming relationship. Leni is essentially a mother to Annette and that doesn’t necessarily work out in the best way.

It’s such an honest and raw depiction of sisterhood and the sacrifices people make for the people they love. Annette and Leni’s relationship whilst less extreme was quite reminiscent of Cecilia and Briony from Atonement in my opinion.

Julie writes women so well - especially flawed and complicated women (my favourite kind!)

Stunning book, addictive reading… I was thoroughly absorbed with the world of Berlin through the years , especially in the part about the twenties. I loved tracking the changing relationship of the sisters and discovering how events in the past shaped their lives.

4.5* Circus of Mirrors - a stunner of a book told across 3 timelines which impeccably intertwine to create an incredible page turner.

Berlin 1926 - Leni gets a job at the Circus of Mirrors, desperate to earn money to put a roof over the head of her and her young sister Nette. Among the many characters in the cabaret club, Leni’s head is turned by Paul the pianist but the relationship is underpinned by untruths. As we follow the sisters we revisit them post-war and then again in the 1960s but always there is a draw back to the Circus of Mirrors.

This is an immersive read. The first third sets the scene (and perhaps is a little slow), but as we get under the skin of the characters and we hop around the timelines, the intricacy and deft-weaving of the plot is something to behold. The characters are well drawn, with a balanced mix of those to love and loathe in equal measure. From the half way point it is unputdownable.

Berlin makes for an incredible backdrop, a city of historical significance through each of the periods in the book. It reminded me of the excellent The Silence Inbetween by Josie Ferguson, a Waterstones shortlisted debut novel for 2024.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, PRH and Netgalley for an ARC.

Another excellent book by Julie, featuring three related female characters facing the challenges of growing up in Berlin between the 1920’s and the 1960’s.
This book has glamour, poverty, war, romance, cruelty and grief woven into the story. A tough read in places but a reminder about how secrets can change the course of our lives

Circus of Mirrors is set in early to mid-20th Century Berlin and follows the lives of two sisters as they navigate their lives through the ever-changing political landscape. It starts in the 1920’s and the story checks in with the sisters’ stories through time up to the 1960’s and the building of the Berlin Wall.

Julie Owen Moylan has a way of describing a scene so vividly, even if it is as mundane as a shop, or a street. I can smell the smells, feel the atmosphere and hear the music as I read. Coupled with the strong female characters, she writes a very good story. I wish we had learned more about the club and the people who worked there, but perhaps that’s another story.

*Thankyou to #NetGalley and the publisher Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for the advance copy of #CircusofMirrors

An absorbing storyline and the setting of Berlin from the 1920s to 60s was interesting but the characters just didn’t do it for me, but of a pot boiler whereas I have really enjoyed previous works by this author.

Well I thoroughly enjoyed that. Starting in 1926 Berlin where sisters Leni and 6 year old Annette are living on the streets following the death of their parents and siblings and Leni loosing her job so unable to pay their rent. In desperation, Lenny takes a job as a cigarette girl at the Babylon Circus a seedy nightclub where the scantly clad dancers entertain wealthy and prominent citizens. In the dark, it looks like a magical place full of mirrors and beautiful decor but when the lights go on the tawdriness is evident. Written in multiple timelines, but not chronologically, this family saga spans a period of nearly 40 years.

Briefly, Leni meets and falls for the pianist at the cabaret club and they start to make plans for the future until fate, and Annette, intervenes tearing them apart and committing Leni to a life of drudgery and sadness. The Babylon Circus will continue to play a part in this family’s lives through the decades.

The whole story revolves around the women in this family and the men seem almost secondary to the story, and are actually quite weak characters. Leni is strong and has instinctive mothering instincts and will do anything to look after what remains of her family. Annette was very young when she lost all her family, apart from Leni, so I could understand her fears about losing her sister, however, as a teenager and as an adult, she was still very self obsessed and selfish. This was clearly a terrible time for the poorer residents of Berlin, survival wasn’t easy and the author wrote this so well. An evocative and entertaining read with a lot of sadness and heartbreak and a romance that spans the years.

Berlin August 1926.
Leni Taube is just nineteen and bringing up her younger sister Annette. Desperate for a job she finds work as a cigarette seller in the Babylon Circus. A tawdry nightclub with scantily clad women dancers. It’s there she meets, and is drawn to Paul the piano player.

Set in Berlin moving backwards and forwards in three different time lines.
I really enjoyed reading this book and it’s so very descriptive words, I felt like I was there seeing it through my own eyes.
Two sisters and their relationship will be called into question, and how life transpires.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

Loved this evocative book set over three pivotal time periods. It's a story of survival and how the era shapes women live shapes their behaviour and actions.

There's a rich tapestry of detail and it felt well researched but not heavy handed. The characters are well drawn and credible and even when their motivations were more opaque were sympathetic and easy to root for. It's a moving book that is also propulsive and readable.

I loved this and would highly recommend it. Fascinating three periods to choose to depict and I learned a lot from this. Julie Owen Moylan's books are a pleasure to read. She's an exceptional writer

A complete romp through the underworld of 1920s Berlin. I loved every page and felt I knew the characters intimately. A real page turner

This is one of my most anticipated books of the year, although to be honest, whenever I finish one of Julie's books, I'm already anticipating the next. I love her work.

I have said before that Julie is the master (or should it be mistress? That sounds a bit dodgy to me) of writing about women. They're honest and raw, sometimes unpleasant, and quite difficult, but they're also beautiful and recognisable and caring. This is the third of her books, and I've read them all and she just gets better and better. They're original and there's so much heart in every page and every character.

Leni was an interesting main character. A bit naïve, easily swayed, a bit obsessive maybe. But she was having to be an adult whilst still a child, being the mother, father, and sister to Annette, having to put her pride aside and do anything she could to keep them fed. So whilst she's not a perfect character, she is the epitome of the strong women Julie has such a talent in writing.

I didn't particularly like Annette, at least at first. She's young, yes, and she's lost almost everyone, doesn't enjoy school, is left behind a lot. Which I appreciate. But she's so whiny and irritating to me, which obviously is a credit to how Julie has written her. I found her to be selfish and at complete odds with her sister. But maybe that's my age. Maybe if I was Annette's age again, I could understand her decisions.

Like Julie's other books, there are male characters, yes, but they don't really matter to me. There's nothing wrong with them, but they pale into the background of the women. This is their story. A story about women; strong women, women down on their luck, in love women, lonely women, scared women, alone women, abandoned women.

Whilst they may have elements of the extreme, given that they're fictional and they have to jump off of the page, I find Julie writes women like they were our friends, our sisters, even ourselves. Whilst some authors manage to do this, I've never felt as strongly as I do with Julie's work.

She has created such a vivid concept of place and time, you can see Berlin, before and after the wars, you can see the risqué outfits of the 1920s, the smoke of the cigarettes, the stranger's hand that finds it's way onto a bottom. It's mainly set in the immediate aftermath of WW1, with some chapters set in the immediate aftermath of WW2, plus 10-20 years after that. I found that fascinating, especially the differences between the time after both wars.

I saw one early review that said it reminded them of Ian McEwan's Atonement about it, and I would have to agree. Both splendid novels that really explore the joy but the difficulties between sisters, between friends, and between lovers.

It is most definitely an historical novel, but there's romance, adventure, thrill, and 100% an epic family saga. She may only be three books in, but in my eyes, Julie Owen Moylan can do no wrong and I hope never to be without her stories.

Becoming a book blogger and reviewer was initially just a way to pass the time after losing my job in 2020 and becoming poorly, and in the time since, I have got more poorly and reading has almost become my sole confidante. So it was just a bit of fun. But by doing that, I've been lucky enough to receive hundreds of books to review that I may not have picked up otherwise. I can't say for certain if I'd have picked Julie's books off the shelf if I was buying them, I can't know that, but being sent them has been one of the best things to happen recently, as she is a one in a million storyteller, and to think I might not have had the chance to read her words.....I think my reading life is enriched thanks to her stories.

It's not an easy book; there's grief, bereavement, war, injury, drug abuse, homelessness, poverty, abandonment, loneliness, betrayal, lies, lost loves. But somehow, whilst they are sad topics, it doesn't being the story down at all, in fact it helps boost up the happy times. I think Leni and Annette are going to stay with me for a very long time.

Berlin, 1926, a city swathed in grief following the twin devastations of the Great War and the Spanish flu epidemic. Leni, herself little more than a girl, has no money and is and caring for her much younger sister Annette. They have no family left living, and are sleeping rough.

In search of a job Leni finds herself at The Babylon Circus, a notorious cabaret spot. Daunted by the tawdry glamour of the place she edges inside and pleads for work. She’s taken on as a cigarette girl, and her life gains a new hope.

Annette, too young to truly appreciate the reality of their poverty, had been growing resentful at the frugality of their lives, but clung to her sister fiercely as her last remaining family. With Leni now working, they spend less time together, and her resentment starts to take on a new and more urgent form.

Leni meets Paul, a pianist at the club, and as they grow closer she begins to think of the life she could be living with him. But how could such a life, one of her very own, include Annette?

The Berlin Julie Owen Moylan brings us truly is a circus of mirrors, a city which suffered torment like no other in the middle part of the 20th century, and in which the same patterns of powerlessness and loss repeat through the generations. We share the minutes, days and hours of these two women struggling to find meaningful lives for themselves amid the turmoil of the times. The sisters see each other as such different people, Leni the sensible one, Annette selfish and thoughtless, but we see them as flawed reflections of each other, more similar than either would concede, and - through the terrors of their times, and the poor opportunities for women to have true agency in their own lives - driven to similar choices, for similar reasons.

This is a poignant and emotional exploration of the bonds of sisterhood and the ways they can be tested and stretched. Moylan evokes brilliantly the complex anguish of the times, and the ways in which love can be everything, yet also not quite enough if there is nothing else.

Julie Owen Moylan’s previously novels presented sensitively nuanced portrayals of early twentieth-century females, and this novel adds further to her impressive stable of characters that implant themselves in your mind to such an extent that you wish the author would write sequels to each of her novels.

The starting point for this particular book is Berlin in the mid-1920s, but whereas elsewhere the ‘Roaring Twenties’ delivered prosperity and excitement, Moylan’s characters Leni and Annette encounter only hardship. They are two orphaned sisters desperately trying to make ends meet. Eventually, older sister Leni secures employment as a cigarette girl at a cabaret show, but beyond the glittering spotlights lies a murky, potentially dangerous world. Will the post-war years be any easier for the two disadvantaged sisters? And will falling in love present a salvation or tear the taut sisterly bond even more? The 'mirrors' hinted at in the title are plentiful ... Each reader will discover their own truth in this novel, which is acutely observed, sensitively written, and as good as Owen Moylan’s previous novels were. Highly recommended! My thanks go to the publishers and to NetGalley for the e-ARC that allowed me to read this book ahead of publication and to produce this book review.

I adored 73 Dove Street and That Green Eyed Girl so my expectations of Circus of Mirrors was high from the outset. The post world war era fascinates me so the setting was a plus.

Julie Owen Moylan writes beautifully about this time period. Her characters in her previous books have been captivating. She creates strong, fearless female characters and I am usually completely drawn into her novels.

Sadly, however, I found the love story - which is central to the plot - to be excessively twee and overly sentimental. I just didn’t believe Lina’s obsession with Paul. I found the ending rather ambiguous - but perhaps that was just me.

The 1920s Berlins plotline and the club setting are well done; Owen Moylan is a master at writing tenderness and an atmospheric stories.
I liked the complexity of the relationship between the sisters Anette and Leni.
Overall, the plot, the characterisation and the prose are 3.5 stars.

Wow a very emotional read. I really got into the characters the sisters i kept willing nothing but happiness and good fortune for them both throughout the book. Loved all the characters in the book, how their lives entwined. kept me gripped to the end, couldn't put it down as i was hungry throughout the book to know more and how it would end.

I really enjoy this author and was very eager to read this, it did not disappoint. It’s a beautiful story set in pre and post war Germany about 2 very different sisters with some very difficult topics touched on, for those who love historical fiction with strong female characters then this is a perfect read. I Highly recommend and I’d like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for this early read. Def one of my new auto go to authors 😊

Julie O Moyan writes some fantastic novels that make you think!
Berlin and a caberet at that. Not somewhere I have read about much but this was set in wartime and so the mix of that world with war was very interesting!

Slow burn but a poignant one. Sisters go through the war and beyond together and ...well this is a complex and very interesting novel and is really best to go in and discover it for yourself.

A beautiful story following the lives of two very different women, who happen to be sisters. The story is set in Berlin, spanning 40 years of pre and post war years.
Julie Owen Moylan has once again delivered intricate complex characters, a wonderfully historic landscape and a moving narrative.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to her next one.

Circus of Mirrors is a beautifully written story set in early and mid-20th century Germany. It follows two sisters, Leni and Annette, as they face the challenges of life in Berlin from the end of World War I to the Cold War.
Circus of Mirrors covers some difficult topics, it’s the perfect choice for readers who enjoy historical fiction, especially those with strong female characters.