Pages & Co.: Tilly and the Bookwanderers: Book 1

Product Information

Matilda Pages’ mother disappeared without a trace when she was a baby, and her father died before she was born. Sixteen modern fiction superstars shine a startling light on the romance and pain of the infamous literary pair Heathcliff and Cathy. It’s a captivating concept, one that has been explored more frequently of late across genres from middle grade to YA to adult fantasy. The thought of bookwandering, as it’s termed in this book, is one that I’m sure has been a daydream of tens of thousands of readers since the creation of the written word.

Tilly and the Bookwanderers Quotes by Anna James - Goodreads Tilly and the Bookwanderers Quotes by Anna James - Goodreads

There are a lot of family and friendship themes in this story and the grandparents may not be the most generous with giving details about their missing daughter (they are in a lot of pain themselves over it), but they are loving and supportive and doing their absolute best for Tilly. Not only can they visit her, but she can visit them by entering their books and traversing their worlds. I did predict almost everything major that would happen as soon as it was possible to even guess, or so I thought, but a bit less than 2/3 the way through the book I did get a (pleasant) shock. It felt a smidge info-dumpy in the last couple chapters, and some characters came to conclusions without much warning or explanation. representation: dyslexia, being a child of a non-nuclear family, characters of colour (described as having brown skin.Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition.

Books — Anna James

I loved getting to know more about Tilly while being able to see some of my favourite characters (such as Anne and Gilbert)! It felt like all my daydreams (and fever dreams - the Wonderland bits are TRIPPY) had come true; it read like the best fanfiction of children’s classics E V E R 😍😂 every book lover’s dream. I wanted to see if there's a comprehensive list anywhere of the books mentioned, A Little Princess and Alice in Wonderland are obvious, Treasure Island and Pride and Prejudice as well, but there were at least a dozen others. I loved A Little Princess and Anne of Green Gables but I’ve never liked Alice in Wonderland and don’t really remember much about Treasure Island.Besides being a fun story in its own right, this novel is made even more lovely by being a book about books. I don’t want to give anything away but if you enjoy children’s classics and have wanted to or have actually revisited your childhood by reading some of those books, you’ll appreciate this series even more. The story itself is intriguing and delightful, and there is a plot twist about halfway through that had my kids and I screaming out loud. I enjoyed learning about the rules of bookwandering in this little novel almost as much as I enjoyed seeing how Tilly thwarted those rules, often accidentally.