2019 Reading Challenge Reviews: Books 46 & 48

Welcome new readers and welcome back continuing readers!

This year, I've been participating in the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge; you can find out more info in my Overview post or on the Pop Sugar Website. I also decided to try out the NEWTS challenge back in April. Last week's post discusses that challenge a bit.

Here are my book reviews for my 46th and 48th books of 2019 (book 47 was an ARC and got it's own post):

Book 46: The Ivy: Scandal by Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur

I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads, but may have given it 3.5 if half stars were available.

The Pop Sugar prompt I chose for this was "A book set on a college or university campus."

I rounded up on this rating because it's the fourth in a series, and even though I read the first three a while ago, it let me pick back up the series and filled me back in on some details so I wasn't lost.

The main character of the series, Callie, is a California native that ends up studying at Harvard. The series follows her through all of her drama and scandal that follows her through her freshman year.

I get a lot of Gossip Girl (the show at least since I've been meaning to get back and read the rest of that series too) vibes from this series.

All of the characters seemed to develop pretty well over the course of the series for me, and the plot of this book was entertaining. All of the relationship drama like: who can Callie trust, who might betray her, who is leaking secrets, etc. made for really easy, entertaining reading.

I would recommend this book (and series) to anyone who wants an easy, quick read with lots of drama and a decent chunk of YA level romance.

Book 48: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

The NEWTS prompt I chose for this was "Care of Magical Creatures - A: A Book starting with A for Aragog."

I've decided that I haven't read enough of Shakespeare's comedies.

This one is set in a magical forest with a ton of love triangles and some fae.

I could tell that this would have been hysterical if seen in the original play form (not just reading the play script). Possibly because of this, I do think that I would have enjoyed it more (let me see that 5 stars!) if I had seen it on stage or even in a screen adaptation.

What I loved about this particular edition was the synopsis of each scene at the beginning of the scene.They helped me really understand what I was about to read and made it easier to picture each scene being acted out.

Who would I recommend this to? Everyone. I mean, come on, it's Shakespeare.