Hey ForeverBookers,
How are you! I hope you’re good!
I’ve just finished “Pages & Co. - Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales,” and I loved it! It was a quick and easy middle grade story, like the first one, with humour, fun, and a spark of danger.
5 Stars!
In “Pages & Co. - Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales,” Tilly is first excited by Christmas that’s coming up. She and her best friend Oskar are going to spend the days before it together in Paris, where Oskar’s dad lives. However before they get to Paris their taken to a meeting for Bookwanderers (magical people with the ability to slip inside stories) and told the rules are going to change…Does this change make things better or do they get even worse? I’ll let you read for yourself. There are twists and turns along the way…
Spoilers Below
“The one thing I am sure of is there something strange is afoot.”
Tilly’s Grandmother, Elsie Pages doesn’t like how a new head of the library, Melville Underwood has just come and changed the rules of how things are to be done there. She’s suspicious of Melville and passes her suspicions onto Tilly, unsurprisingly. Tilly as we learnt from book 1, is a child of a real life human mother, Bea and a fictional father, Captain Crew from “A Little Princess”so she’s from both the fictional and real world. Can she help straighten things out? Or does she just get muddled up herself?
“I don’t trust Melville Underwood at all, and I think there’s more to the story than he’s letting on,” is what Tilly’s grandfather, Archie Pages believes, much like his wife. So Melville is the main villain in this second novel of the “Tilly and the Bookwanderers”series. However, the main villain from book 1, Enoch Chalk also makes a few appearances.
Chalk is the overarching villain in this series. He’s from a certain story, although nobody remembers which. They’re trying to find him to try to put him back where he belongs! Do they come closer to doing that in this second novel in the series? I’ll let you read for yourself.
Oskar is from a bookwandering family too, much to everyone’s surprise. His grandmother, Clara is a bookwanderer, and knows of Tilly’s grandparents, though they don’t directly know each other until this story.
Again, much like in the first book Tilly goes into certain fairytales, which is dangerous according to her grandparents. It’s dangerous they say, because fairytales change or don’t stay the same. They can be altered because they’re not written down in the same way as other novels so they’re word of mouth. Tilly, of course doesn’t listen to these warnings and does what she wants, as many young characters do to create havoc. This leads Tilly and Oskar to worrying times. Are they both safe by the end of the story? Can they still save the day? I’ll let you read for yourself but the story takes a few twists that I didn’t see coming.
“Through our time inside the stories, she decided that we shouldn’t be trying to make them safer, and their danger was what made them special. She believed that we were trying to impose order on something wild and beautiful. And to be honest, I agree with her to a certain point, but she started seeing conspiracy theories everywhere and ended up being forced to . . . Well, she ended up leaving the Underlibrary.” - 91
Elsie recalls her time as a Bookwanderer with her companion who we later learn is Gretchen, a bookwanderer who resides in The Faerie Cabinet, Paris, where Tilly and Oskar spend some of their time before Christmas. They like Gretchen, but still question her motives and aren’t 100% sure of her.
The culmination of “Pages & Co. - Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales,” is Melville, the new head of the Underlibrary and his sister, Decima Underwood doing evil, twisted things to the fairy tales. I won’t say what they do but it’s exciting and I can’t wait to read book 3, Tilly and the Map of Stories soon and see where that story takes us!
I’m rereading “Shadow Of Night” by Deborah Harkness next so there won’t be a review for that as there’s already an in depth review for it on my blog. It’s my favourite series EVER so I reread it every year!
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