Menagerie by Rachel Vincent

A dark and twisty story that encapsulates the best that urban fantasy has to offer, Menagerie by Rachel Vincent is supremely satisfying.  In the back of my mind, I heard dark, discordant calliope music while reading (creepy and foreboding).  A crazy alternate reality of paranoid humans seeking to cage the monsters that exist alongside them, Menagerie sets the stage for many adventures to come. From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent comes a richly imagined, provocative new series set in the dark mythology of the Menagerie… When Delilah Marlow visits a famous traveling carnival, Metzger’s Menagerie, she is an ordinary woman in a not-quite-ordinary world. But under the macabre circus black-top, she discovers a fierce, sharp-clawed creature lurking just beneath her human veneer. Captured and put on exhibition, Delilah in her black swan burlesque costume is stripped of her worldly possessions, including her own name, as she’s forced to “perform” in town after town. But there is breathtaking beauty behind the seamy and grotesque reality of the carnival. Gallagher, her handler, is as kind as he is cryptic and strong. The other “attractions”—mermaids, minotaurs, gryphons and kelpies—are strange, yes, but they share a bond forged by the brutal realities of captivity. [...]