The Book Witch

If you love books about books ... here you go.

Rainy March is a book witch, who along with her adorable feline familiar Koshka, protects books and stories from those intent on making them disappear. While this story uses fantasy and magical realism to make its point, it's clearly a commentary on the growing book banning movements and the threat to silent voices that some unfortunate people in power deem not worthy of being heard.

As is her style if you've read her first two books, Shaffer dips into the classics once again, this time using elements of Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew, Pride & Prejudice and others, with the magical realism aspect being that Rainy and Koshka can travel in and out of stories as needed to restore a book whose words are suddenly disappearing or whose characters have gone missing. It's a fun premise and that was my favorite aspect of the book.

Another entertaining element was British detective Duke, Rainy's long-time book crush from the fictional Duke of Chicago series. Their initial meeting and interactions throughout the book were a lot of fun - particularly how utterly enamored he is of her! He's quite the charmer. When Rainy's grandfather goes missing, Duke and Rainy team up to find him and have all sorts of adventures along the way.

I always appreciate Shaffer's imagination and creativity in her stories. It's clear how much she loves books and the gift of reading. She even gives a sweet spotlight to Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton, who taught generations of us to love books! 

This was an immersion read following along on my Kindle while listening to the wonderful narration by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, a new-to-me narrator who I hope to hear again. While I enjoyed it a lot, I didn't like it quite as much as the previous two books, simply because the story got a little convoluted in parts and I kind of guessed one of the major reveals pretty early on. It also skewed just a touch younger in tone. That said, I thought the romance was very sweet and the final reveal was very unexpected and fun!

If you enjoy a cozy mystery mixed with some fantasy, magical realism and lots of references and nods to other books, this is definitely worth a look!

★★★★

Thanks to Ballantine Books, NetGalley and author Meg Shaffer for the DRC to honestly review and to Audible for the audio. It's out now.