La Ciudad de las Bestias

Young adult fiction from Isabelle Allende

This book is on a list of Time magazine’s top 100 young adult novels of all time, and by the wonderful Chilean author Isabelle Allende.

As a language learner this was a good read, more challenging than a children’s book, but easier to read than a standard novel. I thought it was a little harder than Harry Potter but not by much.

I enjoyed the mix of adventure and exploration in the Amazon. The story went in directions I didn’t expect and came to a satisfying conclusion. Works fine as a stand alone novel, but left me eager to carry on reading the rest of the trilogy.

In the blurb on the back of my edition it says that Allende defines a novel as: a perfect combination of “adventure, magic, humour and nature”. That’s a good description of this book.