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molang_madrigal's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.25
I don’t understand. I accidentally read the last Pages & Co book first and absolutely loved it - I loved the characters, the concepts around bookwandering, the locations, the interactions with fictional characters… The idea that the previous books were set in a lovely family-owned bookshop sounded great. But having read the first book, I absolutely hate it. It’s horrible.
The main character, Tilly, came across ok and friendly and adventurous in the last book. But here she’s, well… I don’t want to be mean, but… a total loser! She’s just hit a nerve within me and she annoys me so much. She doesn’t want to be friends with anyone at her school because no one is “good enough”, because none of them are stuck-up, perfect, holier-than-thou 19th and 20th century children’s book characters! What a sanctimonious twit. Seriously, her excuse is that no one’s “best friend material” except Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland! I knew from reading the last book that the characters liked classic books a lot, but finding out those two were her favourite (and being held up as examples of perfect human beings that others should emulate to be even slightly worthy of being Saint Tilly’s friend!) really annoyed me. First of all, Anne of Green Gables. She’s always annoyed me because I’ve never got the whole “oh my gosh, having red hair is just, like, the worst misfortune that can possibly befall a human being, it’s such a terrible thing, and being pale and skinny as well? Oh my gosh, how awful!” melodrama. I mean, get over yourselves! And from Tilly’s later adventures with the said Anne, it also seems like Anne thinks she’s the only person who’s ever walked the Earth to have the power of “imagination”! And as for Alice from Wonderland, I once went through a phase of liking the Alice books a lot, but even from that I don’t understand why Alice’s character is supposedly one of the only “best friend material” people in the world. The Wonderland books are a lot more about the worlds Alice gets sucked into than Alice’s attributes as a character herself. All Alice really does as a character is wander around Wonderland and constantly ask questions about everything, which is what most people would do if transported to a crazy land. If the excuse is that she’s “curious”, once again, not the only curious person to have ever walked the Earth. Old classic books are not perfect, because they were written in a different era, and it’s really irritating when people worship them as if they’re still perfect.
And the Pages & Co bookshop was a major disappointment. The last book made out it was such a wondrous place, and it’s even based on a specific bookshop I’ve visited once and have nice memories of. And Pages & Co was a big, expansive bookshop, but throughout the whole book the whole place seemed filled with sadness and gloom and didn’t seem like a happy place to be at all! And why? Because the owners are Tilly’s grandparents, and Tilly’s mum, their daughter, went missing shortly after having her and was never found. 12 years on they’re all still very upset about it and the mum’s dark and sombre shadow looms over the shop, every single interaction Tilly has with her grandparents and most of Tilly’s inner thoughts. It’s certainly not the cosy environment I imagined and it makes reading the whole book totally depressing and irritating at the same time. Everyone knows the whole “absent parent” storyline has been absolutely done to death in children’s stories and in this book it’s completely forced down your throat throughout the whole story that Tilly has no parents and her mum ran away, and it’s all anyone ever thinks about.
And the ending and the twist about who Tilly’s parents were was appalling and incredibly unsettling.So Tilly’s family have the power to wander inside books’ stories and have interactions with the characters and Tilly’s mum’s favourite book from childhood was (predictably) another old classic, this time A Little Princess. As a young adult Tilly’s mum was unhappy so wandered inside A Little Princess. Here she met Captain Crewe, who is the main character Sara’s father but not a very major character because he’s a British soldier or something in India and he sends Sara to boarding school and then he dies. So he’s not exactly the world’s most exciting or important book character. But still, because in this world you can have interactions with book characters, Tilly’s mum and Captain Crewe fall in love and Tilly’s mum becomes pregnant with Tilly by him! But if she had Tilly in the book then Tilly would just be a temporary character and not a real existing human being. So Tilly’s mum comes out of the book to give birth to Tilly. However, once you leave a book and stop bookwandering, the story reverts to how it was before and no one can remember you were there, meaning Captain Crewe will never have any memory of his girlfriend or daughter. So Tilly’s mum went back into A Little Princess to try to change the very complicated rules of bookwandering so Captain Crewe would remember her, only she spends so much time in the book that she becomes a character and forgets her human life, and Tilly has to work out that this has happened and rescue her, which was incredibly complicated. So just to recap, someone wandered in their childhood favourite book for some nice memories and comfort as an adult, got pregnant by one of the adult characters who is actually just a figment of imagination, had to leave the book so that the baby wouldn’t just vanish from existence and would grow up to be a real person, but was so in love with this figment of imagination that she went back into the book to get his memories back, a futile task which took so long she got sucked into the book and stopped being a real human being and became a figment of imagination herself. What part of that isn’t totally creepy?!?!?!? I’m sorry, but I just really hate this idea! And all this means that Tilly is half real, half fictional, which some bookwanderers don’t think should be allowed, giving rise to the also done-to-death storyline of people not approving of someone who is half their world, half not! So Tilly manages to rescue her mother and bring her back to the real world, and then they wander inside A Little Princess together to watch Captain Crewe ignore them like he’s supposed to, and they cry and accept that he’ll never remember them or know he has another daughter and has just gone back to being a book character, and it’s all so weird! I really don’t like it at all! I would add a StoryGraph warning but unsurprisingly they don’t have one for Human/book character relationship! Unfortunately it’s put me off the whole series now, I don’t really want anything more to do with it.
The main character, Tilly, came across ok and friendly and adventurous in the last book. But here she’s, well… I don’t want to be mean, but… a total loser! She’s just hit a nerve within me and she annoys me so much. She doesn’t want to be friends with anyone at her school because no one is “good enough”, because none of them are stuck-up, perfect, holier-than-thou 19th and 20th century children’s book characters! What a sanctimonious twit. Seriously, her excuse is that no one’s “best friend material” except Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland! I knew from reading the last book that the characters liked classic books a lot, but finding out those two were her favourite (and being held up as examples of perfect human beings that others should emulate to be even slightly worthy of being Saint Tilly’s friend!) really annoyed me. First of all, Anne of Green Gables. She’s always annoyed me because I’ve never got the whole “oh my gosh, having red hair is just, like, the worst misfortune that can possibly befall a human being, it’s such a terrible thing, and being pale and skinny as well? Oh my gosh, how awful!” melodrama. I mean, get over yourselves! And from Tilly’s later adventures with the said Anne, it also seems like Anne thinks she’s the only person who’s ever walked the Earth to have the power of “imagination”! And as for Alice from Wonderland, I once went through a phase of liking the Alice books a lot, but even from that I don’t understand why Alice’s character is supposedly one of the only “best friend material” people in the world. The Wonderland books are a lot more about the worlds Alice gets sucked into than Alice’s attributes as a character herself. All Alice really does as a character is wander around Wonderland and constantly ask questions about everything, which is what most people would do if transported to a crazy land. If the excuse is that she’s “curious”, once again, not the only curious person to have ever walked the Earth. Old classic books are not perfect, because they were written in a different era, and it’s really irritating when people worship them as if they’re still perfect.
And the Pages & Co bookshop was a major disappointment. The last book made out it was such a wondrous place, and it’s even based on a specific bookshop I’ve visited once and have nice memories of. And Pages & Co was a big, expansive bookshop, but throughout the whole book the whole place seemed filled with sadness and gloom and didn’t seem like a happy place to be at all! And why? Because the owners are Tilly’s grandparents, and Tilly’s mum, their daughter, went missing shortly after having her and was never found. 12 years on they’re all still very upset about it and the mum’s dark and sombre shadow looms over the shop, every single interaction Tilly has with her grandparents and most of Tilly’s inner thoughts. It’s certainly not the cosy environment I imagined and it makes reading the whole book totally depressing and irritating at the same time. Everyone knows the whole “absent parent” storyline has been absolutely done to death in children’s stories and in this book it’s completely forced down your throat throughout the whole story that Tilly has no parents and her mum ran away, and it’s all anyone ever thinks about.
And the ending and the twist about who Tilly’s parents were was appalling and incredibly unsettling.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Death of parent, and Grief
Minor: Pregnancy
Human/Book Character Relationshipmel_s_bookshelf's review
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Abandonment, and Grief
ok7a's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping and Abandonment
Minor: Bullying
zoepagereader's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I quite liked this one. I just felt that the author wasn’t fully aware that very few children who read middle grade (the intended audience for this book) know details of Ann of Green Gables or The Little Princess. The end isn’t felt rushed and sloppy, like something you’d do when you’ve been doing something forever and you just want to be done with it. I personally feel it would have been better on a cliffhanger, continued in the rest of the series. Nevertheless, I will continue it read the series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Abandonment
Moderate: Kidnapping
teignmouth's review
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Abandonment
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