Middle grade contemporary fantasy. A young girl who lives with her grandparents above their bookshop in London, England, discovers that certain people, she among them, can literally enter books, have conversations with characters, and directly observe or even participate in the stories therein. Through the story, she and the reader learn more about the hidden world of these “bookwanderers,” about her powers, and about secrets from her family’s past, and she eventually encounters a new and grave danger.
Cosy and charming, though not as effectively so as it could have been. In particular, the scenes where Tilly goes inside well-known books – for instance, Anne of Green Gables and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, no doubt chosen for copyright reasons – just aren’t as engaging as the scenes in the ‘real’ world, I suspect because of all of the additional things those scenes have to do to signal to readers ‘Hey! This really is a place and characters and a scene from your favourite book slash a book you have heard of but never read!’ along with telling this book’s own story. There aren’t that many of these scenes, but given that they are central to the premise, this is not a minor thing. I also thought that after the quite enjoyable worldbuilding earlier in the book, the plotty resolution at the end was a bit rushed and abrupt – not terrible, just rushed.
Overall, moderately positive. May or may not read the next in the series, we’ll see.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.