Robin’s Reviews – 2026
Book Summary
THE BOOK WITCH by Meg Shaffer is a mix of cozy mystery, detective noir, and fantasy. Rainy March (and yes, she knows she sounds like a weather report) is a book witch. With her magic umbrella and cat familiar, she jumps into stories to protect them from the burners. Burners are those who try to destroy the book from the inside by wiping away pages until the story is gone forever.
But there are rules for book witches. They can’t stay long because they could get trapped inside the story and change it by becoming a character. They can’t sleep, eat or drink inside the story, and they certainly can’t fall in love with a fictional character. After all, real people live in the real world and fictional characters live in stories.
But what if Rainy does? Fall in love with a fictional character, that is. When she meets the dashing hero of her favorite detective series, the Duke of Chicago, it’s love on both sides. Once the book coven catches on, they ban her from seeing him, or she will be expelled from the group and forced to give up her magical gifts.
As if that isn’t enough, her grandfather goes missing and a special book is stolen from their safe. Rainy finds herself in her own mystery, flitting from novel to novel to track down clues. The Duke and Nancy Drew join in to help solve the case. She hops in and out of familiar titles like The Great Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland, and a Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock.
My Thoughts
THE BOOK WITCH was not what I was expecting. For a while, I wasn’t sure it was ‘for me’ because it felt like an old-time, noir, detective story— not my usual cup of tea. I’ve read and enjoyed Meg Shaffer’s other two books (unique and different from each other), so I kept reading. I’m glad I did. For me, I enjoyed the experience of diving in and out between fiction and reality and catching all the literary references. Even LaVar Burton from Reading Rainbow gets a mention! The deeper I went, the more the book delivered: a deeper plot than it first appears, unexpected twists, fun adventures, interesting characters, a romance, a mystery, and so much more. Each time you think you know what’s happening, there’s another twist.
Meg Shaffer delivers a quirky, unique book that crosses many genres. By the end it may have you questioning —What is reality? Maybe YOU’RE living in a book right now.
THE BOOK WITCH by Meg Shaffer comes out April 7, 2026. Pre-ordering is VERY helpful to authors. I suggest ordering through Bookshop.org since they help support small, independent bookstores across the country. You can order here. Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC of this novel. The opinions are my own.
About the Author
Meg Shaffer is the author of THE LOST STORY and THE WISHING GAME, my personal favorite, which was a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist, a Book-of-the-Month Book of the Year finalist, a Barnes and Noble bestseller, a Reader’s Digest Best Book of the year and a USA Today bestseller. Meg holds an MFA in TV and Screenwriting and lives in Kentucky with her husband and two cats. THE BOOK WITCH is Meg Shaffer’s third book.
If You Like…
If you like the description of THE BOOK WITCH by Meg Shaffer, check out my past reviews on these recommendations: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer, The Secret Christmas Library by Jenny Colgan, and The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young.
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About the Author
Ethel Gathers lives in Occupied Germany on an American Army base in the 1950s. She struggles with the emotional pain of infertility and loneliness as a military wife in a foreign country. When she gets lost walking around the city, she stumbles upon a local orphanage. The children here are babies of German women and Black American GI’s. German society shunned these single mothers due to their bi-racial children, and the women cannot financially care for them. Ethel’s purpose in life becomes finding these children loving homes in America, and her “Brown Babies Program” is born.
From Sadeqa Johnson’s website: Sadeqa is the author of six novels. The House of Eve was an instant New York Times Best Seller, Reese’s Book Club selection, Target Book Club pick, nominated for a NAACP Image Award and a 2023 Goodreads Choice award finalist.
Finding a rare, priceless book in her great aunt’s attic turned Mirren Sutherland’s ordinary London life into an adventure. A year later the book now resides in the British Museum with a plaque, giving Mirren credit for finding it. There, in the museum, she is approached by a Scottish man, Jaimie McPherson. He is looking for help finding a book, located somewhere in his home. Mirren agrees to help. When she boards the train for the highlands, she discovers Theo Palliser, an antique book hunting rival and past fling, is also along for the ride.
Jenny Colgan lives in Scotland with her family. She is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling novelist, selling more than 15 million copies of her books worldwide.
About the Author
This book is just fabulous! I love it so much that I did a thing. I wrote to the author directly! Although I write a lot of reviews, I seldom write to the author personally. Even after decades of writing, Mary Kay Andrews just keeps getting better and better! She makes something so difficult (writing a book that hooks the reader) look so easy.
At first I was concerned about the large cast of characters and keeping them straight. Silly me. 
Big Ben, an icon known around the world, is a tourist must-see in London. During WWII Big Ben had an important job beyond telling the time. The nine o’clock chimes encouraged people to pray for peace during the Silent Minute that followed. It also rang in the BBC evening news listened to all over Nazi-occupied Europe. The author Daisy Wood stated, “The great bell represented freedom and better times to come; as long as it tolled, at least one country resisted oppression.” The Clockmaker’s Wife imagines what could have happened if Big Ben had been targeted by the enemy, but the fiction is surrounded by facts about London during WWII. Wood said, “…the loss of such a beacon of hope as the clock tower would have been a terrible blow to morale.”