2019 Reading Challenge Reviews - Books 15 & 16

As I'm looking through the books I've read so far this year, and writing these posts, I'm realizing what my mother has been telling me all these years might just be true: I really do read a lot. That said, there are never enough books, and I wish I could keep up with reading even more.

Here are my thoughts on the 15th and 16th books that I've read this year for the 2019 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (you can see the prompt list in my 2019 Reading Challenge Overview post or on the popsugar.com website).

Book 15: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

I gave this book 3/5 stars on Goodreads, but I would've given it 3.5 if half stars were available.

The prompt I chose for this was "A book with a plant on the cover or in the title." I picked this up for my sorority's national book club, and although a lot of prompts could have fit it, this prompt just kind of smacked me in the face the moment I saw the cover.

Warning: there will be some minor spoilers for this one.

This book follows a family of 4 children from when they are kids as they age. Towards the beginning of this book, the children go to see a fortune teller that can tell them the exact day that they will die. The book follows the children until they reach each of their days. The book brings to mind the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea of this is that by knowing what may happen in the future, your actions in the present may cause that future to occur even if you are trying to prevent it. I've been seeing this concept in a lot of things lately, but I still find it fascinating.

All of the characters in this struggle with their death date in different ways. The book makes you question how much is fate and how much is self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Although I found all of the characters interesting and fairly well developed, I found that I wanted to know even more about them and their thoughts and motives.

My favorite character was probably Simon. I found that I didn't want to put down the book while reading his chapters (the book is split into a section for each child). For all of the other characters, there were parts that I loved, and parts that I was counting down the pages until the next section.

Overall, I found the book really interesting, and it really makes you think about life and how our actions define us. Would you live your life differently if you knew exactly when you were supposed to die? I feel like I probably would, but then, could that change my date? Would it be fate or self-fulfilling prophecy?

Book 16: Edinburgh Castle: A Chilling Interactive Adventure by Matt Doeden

I gave this book 3/5 stars on Goodreads.

The prompt I chose for this was "A choose your own adventure book." I learned while looking for a book for this prompt that a lot of choose your own adventure books are written for children. My town library had a lot of haunted location ones, and I chose Edinburgh Castle because I didn't know much of it's history but had always wanted to visit Scotland and figured I should learn more about it.

This book was entertaining, and in a way educational. I definitely didn't know just how haunted Edinburgh Castle is supposedly. 

I went through this book multiple times making all the different choices so that I could learn all of the endings. Some of the endings were fun, some freaky but interesting, and some downright terrifying. I know I found this in the children's section of my library, but I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with having a child read it. Some of the endings would absolutely have given me nightmares as a child.