2019 Reading Challenge Reviews: Books 51 & 52
Hello readers!
I've decided to participate in two reading challenges this year: the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge and NEWTS. You can find out more info on both challenges in previous Overview posts. Both books reviewed in this post were part of my NEWTS reading.
Here are my book reviews for my 51st and 52nd books of 2019:
I gave this book 3/5 stars on Goodreads.
The NEWTS prompt I chose for this was "Care of Magical Creatures: E: Read a book under 300 pages."
This book was a coffee-table style book with some tips and tricks for life hacks and the like. It was written by the creators of The Daily Skimm which sends emails with brief overviews and breakdowns of things happening around the world/in the news.
Some of the chapters were definitely more useful or interesting to me than others. However, someone else might love completely different chapters than I did.
The format and style of the book were neat, though some of the chapters could be broad (which is Skimm style so that makes sense.)
I think my favorite chapter was the very first one: wine!
Book 52: Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads.
The NEWTS prompt I chose for this was "Charms: A: A book you think has a gorgeous cover."
Set in 1920's Mexico, this book follows Casiopea Tun. She is a teenager/young woman who (along with her mother) helps out (slightly Cinderella style) at her grandfather's home after her father passes away. Her cousin and she do not always see eye-to-eye. Whether it be through jealousy or disdain, they seem to be always butting heads. This finally gets Casiopea in trouble with her family, and she suddenly finds herself tied to a Mayan God of Death with his own family issues. Thus begins Casiopea's journey to help the Mayan God while also learning more about herself, going against everything that her family and society expects from a young woman at the time.
I absolutely love learning about different cultures and their myths, legends, and histories. It could be the Anthropology major in me, but when I saw this book as an option through Book of the Month, I knew I had to have it.
Unfortunately, I realized that I know very little about Mayan mythology, and I'm glad that this book gave me a bit of an introduction.
Even at points where the plot didn't draw me in at the speed it did at first, I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen to the characters. I was not disappointed.
The ending was not what I expected (or to be honest wanted as I was reading it), but I think that it was absolutely perfect for the book.
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