The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer (book review)

GENRE: Adult Fantasy Mystery

LENGTH: 297 pages

PLOT

Rainy March is a Book Witch capable of traversing books in order to thwart people known as Burners who attempt to destroy them from within. When Rainy’s grandpa goes missing during a top secret mission, she enlists the help of a fictional detective, the Duke of Chicago, to help her solve the case.

CHARACTERS

Rainy is a mostly likable protagonist. All book nerds will certainly envy her for her magical ability to enter into stories and interact with characters. She is brave and bold, having fought a multitude of enemies over the course of her career. She does have a sense of inferiority she struggles with due to her late mother who was a legendary Book Witch. I did get annoyed with Rainy towards the end because she started to develop an attitude.

The Duke of Chicago, referred to mostly simply as Duke, is Rainy’s love interest. He is flirtatious and charming. His feelings for Rainy are instalove as he’s pretty much immediately smitten with her upon their introduction. Rainy’s feelings for him, by contrast, are not instalove. She fell in love with him over the years while reading his books. They fall into the trope of forbidden romance as Book Witches aren’t supposed to fall in love with fictional characters. At first, Duke had me giggling and giddy, but eventually his overly effusive attention towards Rainy grew a bit tiresome.

Koshka is Rainy’s feline familiar. He behaves mostly like a normal cat, but he accompanies her on her missions. It reminded me of Shaffer’s last book, The Lost Story, in which the protagonist had a pet rat who joined her on her journey. I love this inclusion of cute animal sidekicks and I hope Shaffer continues this trend in her future books!

WRITING

The novel is told from the first person perspective of Rainy. Thematically, the novel deals with topics of censorship/book banning and how stories can inspire readers and change their lives. The importance (and magic) of storytelling has been a theme that Shaffer has explored across all three of her books.

I have talked about this on the blog multiple times previously, but I love when I find books that blend genres. I have lamented the lack of fantasy-mystery stories, so I was delighted that a favorite author of mine wrote one! This book is a perfect mix of the genres. I did figure out part of the mystery, but there was a bigger part that surprised me. The story does get a little meta, but I enjoyed following Rainy and Duke through multiple books as they chased after clues.

I loved the concept of the Burners – it was like a bookish version of superheroes (Book Witches) and supervillains (Burners). Rainy has an arch-nemesis Burner known as X and he was really underutilized. I had hoped they’d play a larger role in the story.

Something fun is that there is an Easter egg – a mentions of Hugo Rees the illustrator of the Clock Island books from Shaffer’s debut novel The Wishing Game – in the novel. It’s small, but I thought it was a cute touch for both Shaffer herself and her loyal readers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If I were to compare this book to Shaffer’s other two published works, then I’d rank it second – above her debut The Wishing Game, but not quite as perfect as The Lost Story. This book feels like a love letter to readers. If you’ve ever wished that you could be a part of the stories you read, then this story is for you.

FINAL RATING: 4.25⭐️