City of Beasts

City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende, translated from Spanish to English by Margaret Sayers Peden, is a wonderful mysterious book. You read a story about disappearing people and the misspoken legends of the Amazon. Alex and Nadia find out things about themselves that they didn’t know about each other.

City of the Beasts is about a city boy names Alexander Cold, nicknamed Alex, whose mother is very ill. His father ships him off to go stay with his grandmother, Kate Cold. When he reaches New York to stay with her he flies off with her to the amazing Amazon Rainforest for an International Geographic hunt. A Beast has “inhabited” that area and the people of the land want to know what is happening. He meets a young native named Nadia who quickly becomes his friend; they take a trip through the Amazon also through their selves to find answers to the Beast. This is the journey of a lifetime that will keep you wanting to read more.

I actually loved this book; it kept me reading it even though the beginning wasn’t much of a thriller. As I keep going through the book I find out something’s about the Amazon and the people who lived there and who still are. This book also explains how outside contact with the Amazon, and those living in it, have had various problems with greedy businessmen and accidental explorers exploiting these humans to unknown diseases. So this book is good for people caring about the environment and others who want to know how the ‘Indians” survived without dying out

Book Review by NaDine P.