I was desperate to jump back into the world of bookwandering with Tilly and her family after adoring Tilly and the Bookwanders. This series has such a magical concept of being able to walk into the pages of a book.
Tilly and the Lost Fairytales, Anna James (Pages & Co #2)
Themes: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Books about books
Reading Format: Hardback
Pages: 400
3 1/2 STARS
Read my review of the first book in this series, Tilly and the Bookwanderers here.
Tilly is such a delightful character to read about, she’s the perfect child heroin! She is adventurous and fun and she doesn’t always follow the rules, which is excellent because some very exciting things can happen when you don’t follow the rules.
This book takes off from where we left off in the first book as the mess that Chalk created is attempting to be cleaned up. Tilly has her mum back and has also made some interesting discoveries about her own heritage. This book follows fairytales and the dangers that are unfolding within them, but no one knows why or the full effect of this. Queue Tilly jumping into some of our most-loved fairytales and meeting characters like Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel, which was all great fun to read about!
When Anna James plays with such familiar stories it’s interesting to see what she does with the characters, because obviously, they’re stepping out from their usual narrative arcs. With there being so many different versions of fairytales too, I enjoyed reading Anna James’ interpretations of them. She writes in such a lovely way when discovering these stories all over again in a different form.
I wish I had these books around me as a child because I would have adored them even more. Tilly is the kind of character I would have adored and looked up to and I love her friendship with Oskar. I think every book needs a dynamic duo like these too, they balance each other out well. I want to know so much more about the other characters in this book, like her Grandad and his time as a head librarian or her Grandma and her experience investigating fairytales.
Overall, this book was as ever a magical delight and I adored it. If you’re in the market for a Middle Grade adventure through books, this is the one for you!
