Really not great.

bel Dandy grew up in Faeryland, surrounded by the most unusual people, right down to is legless father and armless mother. To him, oddities were the norm, and it was he, with his own human unoriginality he saw as the lack. While he was a decent knife-thrower, he felt unspecial, surrounded by the inhabitants of the Faeryland show. When the departure of the Siamese twins, and the souring of his dealings with Phoebe the dogfaced girl, Abel grows restless and angry. At night, his dreams are filled with images of an Egyptian beauty, and he knows he’ll never find someone like that inside the life he leads.

After a couple of run-ins with local town boys, Abel steals away in the middle of the night, planning to find fortune, and return with money and his own name. Instead, he joins the Marvel Bros. Circus, only to be thrown out when they discover the escaped monkey to be his friend Apollo, Phoebe’s brother, who followed him from home. Thinking himself lost, and his friend doomed, he stumbles upon a farmhouse near the tracks, only to meet up with Apollo yet again.

After receiving a job within the house, Abel begins his plan of earning enough money to send Apollo back home, and to take off again on his own in search of a show. But then, much to his surprise, a show comes to him.

While at first excited about the possibility of getting a knife throwing act, it doesn’t take Abel long to realize that Dr. Mink is up to no good. Through luck, he learns that Mink planned to sneak away in the night, taking Apollo with him, and manages to weasel himself into the deal as a driver.

Upon meeting up with the rest of Mink’s crew, and finding the children locked in their wagon, Abel knows what he has to do. But how can he get away, and save them all too? And what of the mysterious woman still entering his dreams? What does it all mean?

I had some trouble getting into this audio book initially, but it ended up being good. The characters are interesting but the plot is a little slow. The whole "reincarnated star-crossed lovers" thing is a bit much but I guess the author had to have some reason for Able to leave home. Able is almost too virtuous and suffers from a superman type complex, except he thinks about and refers to sex a lot so this is more a YA high school book than middle school book. Minus the sexual references, I think the characters and plot would appeal more to middle schoolers so it is a book that doesn't fit well into either level. Also, despite the reincarnated lives thing, this book is probably more historical fiction than fantasy so if you're looking for a fantasy type book like Cirque de Freaks, this isn't what you'll get.

Got this book about the same time I picked up Geek Love and really it's kinda the young adult version in that it's also about a bunch of circus freaks. But that's where the comparison really ends. Freaks is about Abel Dandy, a boy who's the only normal one in the freak show where his parents live. So Abel runs away to seek his own fortune. He falls in with a traveling freak show run by a total ass hole and discovers this Egyptian Mummy. It's actually pretty period for circuses in the early twentieth century to have Egyptian stuff because, let's face it, that's when it was very avante garde to essentially be proud of being a grave robber.

So Abel starts having all these wonky dreams and hey, gets a total crush on the mummy. There's also a sub plot about some freak kids (like, actual freak kids) and Dr. Mink (the villain) being a kidnapper and Abel totes saves the day and gets the mummy. Sounds confusing, but it's a decent read.

I have loved Annette Curtis Klause since Silver Kiss, and Blood and Chocolate so this book was no hardship for me to read, although I felt like the story would have been just as good without the mummy love story because I thought that was a little, well, weird.

I would have to say that this book was just okay. It was good enough to keep me reading until the end but not good enough to make me dwell on it or want to read it again.
It's about a 17 year old boy named Abel that grew up in what was referred to as a Freakshow. His mother had no arms, his dad had no legs but Abel was considered "normal". Because of this he felt like he didn't fit in there and set off on his own to make his fortune. He is followed by the puppy boy and from there their adventure starts.
Some of the things that I liked is that it showed that just because someone might look different than you it does not make them different on the inside. It was shown very well how everyone has feelings and a heart. It also did a very good job of showing Abel becoming a man.
Some of the things I did not like was the suggestive sexual themes that I felt was not necessary at all. They weren't horribly bad but more than I personally felt was necessary. Also, Abel tended to get on my nerves with the way he treated puppy boy (sorry I can't remember his name) and his sister. Then the way he never really believed the little girl who could tell the future. No matter how many times she proved she knew what she was talking about, Abel always seemed to doubt her.
All in all it wasn't a bad read. It had some lessons to be learned.

I don't know what it is about circuses in books, but I find them magical and they always grip me entirely.

I loved the idea that Abel Dandy is brought up in a freak circus, when he is the only one that isn't a freak. He ended up getting visions that took him away from his family, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for his parents, and yet his adventure awaited him.

I loved the different types of circus he encountered, I felt like I was running away with him.

Friendship is an on going theme in this book, and it just proves that friendship is one of the most relationships in people's lives. True friends is what everyone needs, and it just shows how powerful friendship can truly be. This is what I liked most about the book, because friendship is so important to me, myself.

I would definitely reread this book if I had the chance to, but with the amount of books I've got to read, it doesn't seem likely. I think a film adaptation of this would be amazing also, but then again, I'd be worried it would spoil the amazing story.

When your whole life you live in a world where everyone's got something special, turns out being normals not so great after all.

*

Abel Dandy was born and raised in Faeryland, a circus with more than its share of physically unusual people. Abel, without any unique physical characteristics of his own, feels out of place and struggles to find a talent to warrant his place in the circus. He soon runs off to try to make his own way in the world- by joining a different circus- without the burdens of being associated with the people he has grown up with. These plans are dashed when a friend from his old life, Apollo, a little boy with hypertrichosis, follows him. Meanwhile, Abel is enticed by reoccurring romantic dreams of a past life with a young Egyptian woman.

The book was repetitive, with Abel running around and joining various shows all while unsurprisingly discovering the so-called "normal" people he longed to be around were mostly crueler than the accepting members of his home. And the romance just wasn't very good. Tauseret  who spends most of the book as an actual mummy  doesn't really love Abel- she loves who he used to be. And Abel generally returns her affection because he's a teenage boy.

Personal history: Purchased in a used book lot.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book as it's not my usual genre, but I really enjoyed the character portrayals! There was a lot of Abel's lusting after girls and I didn't like some of the wording to describe people (like C.C. as a "he/she"), but overall, I liked this story a lot.

I read in an interview that the author was forced to do a rush job on this novel by her publisher. It isn't the best Klause is capable of but her less-than-best is still head and shoulders above many of the other books in this genre.
The plot revolves around so-called "human oddities" employed by traveling freakshows as well as reincarnation and a love story with an Egyptian mummy. This book poses sophisticated questions to the YA reader such as whether individuals with a strange appearance should hide away or be allowed to exhibit themselves and earn a living that way, even if they have to endure the scorn of gawkers. The chase scenes were good and the author managed the multiple characters well. I often think there are too many novels set around WWII but if this book had been pushed ahead a few decades, Klause could have described the conflict between the American Eugenics movement and their Nazi admirers versus the circus freak characters in the story.

Klause reworks the mummy legend of ancient love that burns across the ages against the backdrop of an 1890's traveling carnival. There's plenty of humor, especially at the beginning of the book as Abel, the perfectly normal teller of the tale, describes his nuclear and extended "freak" family. Like any good YA novel, it's a coming of age story as Abel hits the road, joins up with a circus, then another freak show, and even lives for while in a brothel. Along the way, Abel meets those who help him, those he must help, and the wonderfully villainous Dr. Mink. Through all his adventures, Abe's consumed by dreams of a beautiful Egyptian woman, drawn to her moth-to-flame-like. Like Klause's other YA novels (The Silver Kiss and Blood and Chocolate) she lays down new riffs on old stories with amazing results.

OK...I guess I don't get out much, but "aching loins" and heaving bosoms in a young adult book? Was curious about this one because it seemed to be an adventure/coming of age novel set in the late 1800's. A young man has grown up in the midst of a group of circus performers who are labeled as freaks and feels he does not belong because of his normalcy. You do feel a connection with the characters and root for them in their bid for escape from an abusive circus owner but all in all I just could not completely engage with this book.Stuck with it to see how it ended but happy to be moving on.