This book was all style over substance. I´m glad, too, that I´m not alone in disliking this book :).

By and large, "style over substance" would seem to be my issue with Angela Carter as well. She's really good at descriptions, but that still doesn't mean her characters and stories come alive for me in a way that make me empathize with them.

Yes, that´s true. And I cannot stand Angela Carter´s books either. So "style or substance" is something that clearly doesn´t work for me in books.

Ditto, and btw the reason I mentioned Carter in the first place is that somehow I tend to mentally toss her books and this one into the same bucket to an extent that I even keep forgetting that they're by different authors. I haven't even read "The Night Circus" yet, but somehow every blurb and description I read instantly makes me think "Angela Carter".

To be fair, Erin Morgenstern doesn´t sexualize everything she is writing about. Something which Angela Carter does and which I dislike immensely. So if anyone would force me to choose between a Morgenstern and a Carter book, I would choose the Morgenstern.

OK, that at least is good to know ... (and guess what, that's the first time I actually hear someone express a significant difference between the two that I'd instantly mark down as a recognizable difference).

I have read The Bloody Chamber by Carter and I read the first couple of pages of The Magic Toyshop and in both books she has this sexual innuendo going on. And it´s not my thing, at all.

Oh, I agree -- on the basis of "The Bloody Chamber" (most of it, anyway) and "Nights at the Circus". (Btw, there's probably the biggest reason why I tend to toss them into the same bucket ... "The Night Circus" vs. "Nights at the Circus". And while the plots may be different, the settings do sound similar.)