Age recommendations: 9-13
Summary:
Eleven year old Tilly Pages had lived all her life in her grandparents bookshop, Pages and Co. Her father died when she was little, and her mother disappeared soon after she was born, leaving nothing behind but memories that would never be Tilly’s. However when her favorite characters, Anne (from Anne of Green Gables) and Alice (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) start showing up in the bookshop, Tilly suspects there’s more to her story than what she has been told. And when she finds out she is a bookwanderer, a group of people who can travel into books, she and her best friend Oscar are dumped into a new mysterious world unlike any other; full of peril, adventure, and tea parties.
My Review: (⚠️Caution and Parent note: I do talk about a spoiler in this review, however it does not entirely ruin the story, and needs to be talked about)
This book kept popping up everywhere. I had seen it in a bookshop and thought: oh that would be a fun read someday. Then a friend recommended it, so I read it. This decision to read this book was also probably prompted by the fact that I wasn’t reading anything for fun at the moment. In short it was a fun read. It was slow at getting started, and with the case of a few books I have read, it had trouble picking up until the end. Tilly’s mom falls in love with a book character and has a child (Tilly) with that character, which I found odd, annoying, frustrating, and weird. And Oscar’s parents had a divorce which I also found annoying and frustrating, especially as in a visit with Anne (Anne of Green Gables) they say it is “normal” for families to do stuff like that 😒Uh hu. (there was a WHOLE conversation about it) Other than that I thought it was a fun and interesting read. It had no key theme, and no character development that comes to mind, disappointing but expected from a book like this. It has been put into the pure cotton candy full of high fructose corn syrup genre of books.
Good quote: “Books can change minds and change worlds, open doors and open minds, and plant seeds that can grow into magical or even terrifying things. Stories are things to be loved and respected at the same time; never underestimate the power of them.”
Concerns: As listed in my review, Tilly’s mom falls in love with a book character and has a child (Tilly) with him without getting married. This makes it a slightly uncomfortable read.
Overall rating: 2 out of 5