A BookTator's Isabel Allende Experience

Source: Jeane Ess

My fellow BookTator Karena and I had the opportunity to go to a reading by Isabel Allende this week and I couldn't have been more thrilled. I liked The House of Spirits (her first novel), and it was definitely one of my most enjoyable, if not my most enjoyable assigned reading in high school, but Isabel really got me with City of Beasts. It's her only YA novel, but I love just about any adventure that has to do with the Amazon rainforest and all the mysteries that still lay untold there, plus it's a trilogy (The Eagle and Jaguar trilogy).

Source: Jeane Ess

Source: Jeane Ess

A few years later my Film Appreciation teacher gave a lecture on Zorro, and mentioned that Isabel Allende wrote a novel that really did the character justice. So, I checked out her novel, Zorro, and loved, loved, loved it! If you are any sort of Zorro fan, you will love it too. I digress, so Karena and I went to see her at a reading/signing put on by Bookshop Santa Cruz at Santa Cruz High School, and it was everything that I could have wished for! Isabel was absolutely a fantastic speaker, she made me laugh out loud, she made me tear up, basically she made me feel like I was reading one of her books! Really though, mostly she made me laugh my butt off.

Source: Karena Fagan

Please, please, please if you have not had the chance to read one of her books try and do so sometime, they are amazing. She is branching out in a new direction with her newest one, Maya's Notebook, and her next book which will be released next year which she said will be a thriller. And if you ever get the chance to go to a book signing, DO IT! You will (hopefully) not regret it!

Source: Karena Fagan

Do you have a favorite Isabelle Allende novels? Have you been to one of her events? Tell us about it!