Immersive story and famous characters make for a young book lover's dream.

4.5 stars.

Tilly Pages lives above her grandparents' bookshop. Growing up around books she is a true reader, and despite not knowing her father, her mother disappearing while she was still a baby, books are her respite.

Wanting to know more about her mother, she notices one day strange people appearing in the bookshop that seem somehow familiar. Lizzy... Alice... Anne...

Tilly soon realises that she is meeting characters from her favourite books. crossing from literature to life... and she may be able to go back with them...

It's the start of a book lover's paradise, a wish fulfillment - what if you could travel inside your favourite stories? It did remind me of Inkheart at several points, but used real books and characters known and loved the world over, using real details and scenes from them.

This will all wash over the heads of readers who aren't familiar with such titles as Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland and A Little Princess, but for those who love these stories, it will be a real treat seeing their favourite lovingly worked over and meshed together into a story.

I really liked this as an audiobook, it was a well-narrated story that transferred well for listeners, with the narrator voicing Tilly, her friends and family as well as the book characters with distinctions. She also kept Tilly sounding her age, though I wasn't too keen on her accent for Anne Shirley (or how she pronounced Avonlea!).

A great start to a series, will be pored over by young literature lovers (and those adults who read them as children). Lots of excitement and the potential for adventure.

With thanks to Nudge Books for providing a sample Audible copy.

Het is de ultieme droom van elke lezer: In de boeken kunnen springen die je leest of de karakters uit de boeken mee kunnen nemen in jouw leven. Ik heb meer dan eens een boek vastgehad waar ik dolgraag zelf onderdeel van had willen zijn en hoe tof zou het zijn om na een lange schooldag met een kopje thee bij te kunnen kletsen aan de keukentafel met fictieve vriendjes en vriendinnetjes?

James is er in dit boek erg goed in geslaagd om deze droom levensecht te laten voelen. De hoofdpersoon van dit verhaal, Matilda, is heel herkenbaar. Daarnaast had ik ongelooflijk veel geluk dat alle boeken die in dit boek voorkwamen, boeken waren waar ik zelf ook wel een bijzondere band mee had. Dat maakte dat dit verhaal alleen maar vermakelijker, en gek genoeg ook persoonlijker, werd.

Wat ik ongelooflijk sterk vond aan dit verhaal, was de balans tussen de introductie van de wereld en alle regels, en toch wel een vorm van spanning en mysterie. Het boek wordt, ondanks de grote hoeveelheid informatie, nergens saai en verliest nergens het kinderlijke enthousiasme waarmee dit avontuur begonnen was.

En hoewel het einde niet echt een cliffhanger was, ben ik wel ongelooflijk benieuwd hoe het verder gaat!

Well... I like the idea of people being able to actually move in the books and interact with the characters.

I wish I could.

But when I start thinking about which book I'd visit, why and what I'd expect to happen... I mean... I have my literary crushes, but... why would they fall in love with me, instead, and what would happen then to the book and the story I love? Much better to let the heroine be my stand-in, or me live the love story through the heroine. Or visiting Middle Earth or Narnia? The "reality" wouldn't be as nice as it is sitting in a comfy chair wrapped in a soft blanket, with a cup of tea on the sideboard and a cat purring on my lap. No... I don't think I'd like to visit books or find a portal into a fantasy world. :-D
I think I'd much rather WRITE about it...

I found her idea of the first literary characters and their adventures rather boring and... you know, Anna's image of what and who these characters are isn't my image of them. This is one reason why I dislike newly written sequels to old classics, like all the Pride and Prejudice "sequels" or [b:Scarlett|73062|Scarlett|Alexandra Ripley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438534619l/73062._SY75_.jpg|2103634]. (That one I especially hate. Margaret Mitchell described Scarlett very thoroughly in Gone With The Wind - she had pea-green eyes and BLACK hair. Alexandra Ripley writes her RED hair, and changes her character and nature, because "she didn't like Scarlett". Dang it, woman! If you don't LIKE the character, don't f-ing write about her! The worst thing was that Alexandra Ripley made Scarlett GIVE TARA AWAY! Anyway, this isn't about Scarlett, this is about Tilly.)

I think the book gets better after the midpoint, so perhaps it would have been better if they had cut half of the build-up. It didn't really even need Alice. I was hoping

Spoiler

Alice was sent to fetch Tilly by Enoch, and they would have started book jumping,

because Enoch obviously could... which to me made him a more interesting character than many others (if not all of them). Kind of Anne of Green Gables' villain effect :-D And then Anna had to keep him the villain, so... he was slightly mustache-twirling every now and then :-D On the other hand, I think Anna could have developed this story a bit longer. It would have been a better book with more editing and rewriting.
I wish they had developed characters more. I suppose it's because this is a Middle-Grade novel, so people think it's not needed.

Spoiler

And how did Tilly's mother recognize her? She's been living in the dang book for 10 years, the last she saw her daughter was when she was a baby. It's also quite interesting how Tilly actually was "made".