Beautiful World, Where are You, Sally Rooney

There were some things I liked about this, in terms of the characters and their relationships with themselves and each other it was great, nuanced and realistic and intriguing. 

However the story is interspersed with emails between the two main characters, and these I found forced and self absorbed. They seemed like thinly veiled opinions of the author, unconvincing and should have been a series of essays, published apart and made more well rounded. I think they did little to augment the characters, or at least didn't tell us anything that couldn't have been shown, and I found them clunky and distracting. 

Speckled throughout the novel are also vignettes of the landscape, maybe a little on the nose regarding the title, and gave the impression that Rooney was writing with TV in mind.

On the whole I enjoyed the story, but not one of the best.

La Ciudad de las Bestias, Isabel Allende

I read this as a kid and I remember being blown away by the magic of it. It seems so realistic and possible, and then melts into a fantasical world. It was lovely to read it again through the light fog of a second language. The images and impressions I remembered were still there, and it is a gorgeous novel.