Enchanted Circus

[ronudea09]

Can’t find this book and it’s driving me insane. Believe I read it about 5 years ago in a library. What I remember is it’s a teenage boy maybe on holiday by the sea Andrew it switches between being narrated by him and a girl who lives there. He meets her at the beach and her distinguishing feature is the fact she smokes cigarettes and wears bright red lipstick. The girls unhappy with her life and convinced him to run away and somewhere along the way they join a circus. I think after time the boy gets jealous because she falls in love with one of the performers. There’s a conflict and all I remember is at the end they have to perform a magical/superstisous ceremony in a dark room with mirrors??? To release someone?? It’s driving me mad!

I cannot find this book anywhere.

[notchrisleir]

I don’t have much info on it, but I’ll do the best I can. The book starts out with the main character playing a video game online, and he talks about how he’s fairly good but there’s this person who NO ONE has ever been able to beat before. The guy is just too good and he wrecks everyone on the game. Eventually somewhere in the beginning of the book the main character beats him and is absolutely shocked that he does, as is everyone else in the game.
Shortly after this, things start to haywire for the main character. He explains that his shower (or sink, I can’t remember exactly) gets so hot that it scalds his hand, and when he looked at the knob it was turned so far that it cracked the tile. Also, he explains that his dryer burned his clothes into nothing, even though it had never done that before.
I remember that he worked at a robotics center (or something similar), and the robots there start to go haywire as well and try to hurt him. There is one machine that’s sort of like an arm that grabs things, and another that’s more of a half complete humanoid robot.
Eventually in the story you learn that the person he beat in the game actually died, and it foreshadows that everything could be haunted by this person.

This is about all I remember of the plot. My memory is telling me that the book had a purplish and possibly greenish cover with red lettering for the title. It definitely wasn’t a bestseller by any means but it was an amazing book. That’s basically all the info I have on it, but any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you!!