Report 2: The Couple Next Door

 Anne and Marco Contis: Anne is an attractive woman from a wealthy family who has depression postpartum and doesn't feel good on her own skin. Marco is very good looking, unlike Anne, he had to fend for himself from a very young age. 

Cora: A six-month-old who went missing. 

Cynthia and Graham: Anne and Marcos’s neighbours. Cynthia has a bubbly and flirty personality, while her husband is a reserved person. They don’t have any children, in fact Cynthia seems to have something against infants.

Detective Rasbach: He is determined to find out what really happened with the baby.

When the couple saw the empty crib, they immediately called the police. Marco admits he didn’t lock the back door every single time he checked on the baby. The garage door was found wide open and their motion detector had been deactivated, whoever took the baby had to come out the couple’s back door. 

After being asked if they had any idea who might have taken Cora, Marco says Anne’s parents are wealthy people. Anne thinks about it and for the first time she feels optimistic about the whole situation, if the kidnapper is after their money maybe her baby won’t get hurt.

Hours later, the detective is informed that one of the neighbours saw a car driving away from the direction of the Contis’ garage exactly at 12:35 am with its headlights off. This new information is very interesting considering the last time Marco checked on the baby was at 12:30 am. 

The couple is required to talk to the media. In their statement they omit the baby was home alone, but it is just a matter of time before someone finds this out.

Number of words: 285

Claudia Leticia Mendez Caamal

Report 2: The Old Man and the Sea

In the book, we are able to see two important characters that the author narrates us as the main characters of the story. The first one is Santiago, which has a nickname that everybody calls him that way “the old man”. He is an old man, with an old soul, he has wrinkles on his old face, he has been a sailor for all his life, being a lonely person that has to work in the sea in order to survive, being a wise but at the same time stubborn person. On the other hand we have Manolin, whose nickname in the book is “the boy”. He is a young and brave boy, who likes to help the old man on his adventures on the sea because he is a boy who works very hard but understands the value of a friendship.

In the first character we are able to look at the story of an old fisherman that comes from Cuba and a young boy who usually goes fishing with the old man in order to help him and provide food to his family. Unfortunately the luck of the old man hasn't struck him for 84 days, and he hasn't caught anything, leading to the family of the boy to tell him to abandon the work with the old man and go with another sailor that can provide good work to the boy and his family. However, the bond that the old man and the boy has created is really strong, and the boy is always trying to help the old man on his travels, remembering the good times and at the end of the day, for the boy he was his mentor, he teached him how to fish, so it was hard for him to leave him but it was not his decision. 

As usual, on his last day the boy helped the old man with all the chores that he will need to do and he has meant to do. At the end of the day the boy invited the old man to have a beer and something to eat as a farewell and they end the day talking about life, sports and the sea.

On the next day, after having the sense of being ready to sail and finally change the luck that the old man had, he went to the boy's house in order to say goodbye and let him help him to get everything ready for his long journey on the open sea. The boy wished luck to the old man, he pulled everything on his boat and he started his journey.

    Victor Mauricio Lopez Espadas

    438 words

Report 2: The Rising of the Shield Hero

        At the very beginning of the story, we follow our protagonist: Naofumi Iwatani, a young man who enjoys having a carefree life to play videogames and read whatever he wants whenever he wants. Now, in one of his visits to the library, he encounters a book called The Records of the Four Holy Weapons which had mysteriously fallen from the shelf, Naofumi decides to give it a look and finds out that the story in the book is not finished, being followed up by a bunch of blank pages. He touches these in a distracted manner and all of a sudden gets absorbed inside the book.

Now, here is where the plot starts, Naofumi appears in a castle alongside three other young men just like him, whose names are Itsuki, Motoyasu and Ren. Confused, everyone decides to get information from the guards, finding out they were summoned as "the four holy heroes". Surprisingly enough, everyone gets excited by the idea of becoming heroes just like in a videogame or a novel, and agree to go with the flow in order to learn more about the world they would be living in from now on.

After a bit of tourism, the four are called to a meeting with the king, who tells them the country they are now in is called Melromarc. Everything seems to go smoothly for Itsuki (bow hero), Motoyasu (spear hero) and Ren (sword hero), but not so much for Naofumi (shield hero), who gets a disdainful look from the king, and is continuously ignored by him on purpose. Everyone is told that in order to save the world they were summoned to defeat waves of enemies that come from "The rifts", all of them being announced by a powerful magic artifact known as "the dragon clock". 

Later on in the meeting, each hero is introduced to their future party members. However, Naofumi is left alone and only one person stands up to join him in his travel, Myne Sophia, a beautiful adventurer who seemed really keen on helping our protagonist. Now, it is necessary to mention that the heroes are unable to fight together unless they really need to, because they only gain experience points by separating from each other a certain distance. Therefore, Naofumi and Myne, his only companion, leave in order to start leveling up, and everything seems to be going alright until night… When they check in at the town’s inn to go to sleep, Myne offers Naofumi a drink, and tells him that sleeping in the same room would not be a problem for her. Nevertheless, he refuses to do so by telling her that it would make people misunderstand their relationship as a party, they end up sleeping in different rooms, but when morning arrives Naofumi finds his door open, and realizes that all his money, which was provided by the king, was stolen. 

Naofumi tries to find Myne to tell her the bad news, just to find her crying in the arms of Motoyasu, the spear hero, he tells them that they were robbed, only to receive a hateful look from both of them. Our protagonist, dumbfounded asks them what is wrong and sees that a group of guards have come to the inn, he asks them for help, but the guards grab him and tell him that he has been accused of rape by Myne, whose real name is Malty Melromarc, the kings daughter. Naofumi is then submitted to a judge, and tries his best to prove his innocence, but the tears of Malty, whose position is way more privileged than his, convince everyone of the contrary. He is told that such a crime is punished with death, but since he was still a hero, his punishment would be being exiled. Naofumi had been framed, and now, he has not only to clear his name, but to survive in another world, without any weapon other than his holy shield.

In order to close this review, I personally identify myself with the main character, because I  lived a similar experience in highschool because of an ex-girlfriend who was extremely volatile. I got “cancelled” by her, and almost everyone in the school stopped talking to me. However, I was a great student, and the teachers helped me to clear my name by helping prove that everything was a lie. Nevertheless, I decided to keep a low profile from then on, because I already knew how dangerous people could be.

Diego Santiago Cervantes Chi

747 words, I am sorry, but the book is not precisely short. I hope you still like it, though.