Be still my beating heart. The sixth and final book in the Pages and Co series from Anna James, The Last Bookwanderer, is released in the US on February 27, 2024. I have loved this series since I first opened the pages of Pages and Co: The Bookwanders in 2018 and met Matilda Rose Pages at her family’s bookstore. This week Milo and Tilly journey into mythology and Arthurian legend as they seek to restore balance to book magic.
“Who am I to say where the line lies between the real and the imaginary – or who can bend it?” – The Botanist
Matilda Pages has lived with her grandparents in their beloved bookstore, Pages and Co. for her entire young life. If you are a reader who has thus far managed to avoid the desire to open your own bookstore, then this is at an end, the rooms and nooks of Pages and Co. will make you want to live there at once. Very quickly in the first book, The Bookwanders, Matilda realizes that losing yourself in a book is much more literal than she thought, as characters from her favorite stories begin appearing in the shop through the magic of bookwandering. With the help of Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, and her best friend Oskar, she discovers a whole new world of heroes and villains at her fingertips, and finally unravels the mystery of what happened to her mother.
In her second adventure, The Lost Fairy Tales, Tilly faces chaos at home and in Paris, as beloved tales begin leaking book magic into the real world. We learn more about the nature of fairy tales, and the world of bookwandering opens up even more. We are shown the political side of bookwandering and explore different factions each with their own agenda and proposed rules for how to navigate the magic.
In book three, The Map of Stories, Tilly and Oskar must travel to America in search of the fabled Archivists, in the hope of saving book magic as they know it. Along the way they discover new magic, make new friends, and make decisions about book wandering that they never saw coming. While Oskar begins to be sidelined in this book, something that I do not like, this might be my favorite of the stories.
Book four, The Book Smugglers, takes us on an adventure with new friend Milo on board the Sesquipedalian, a magical train that uses the power of imagination as fuel to travel through both Story and the real world. When poisoned copies of The Wizard of Oz are sent to Milos’ Uncle and Tilly’s grandfather, leaving them both in magical sleeps, Milo and Tilly are in a race against time to find an antidote and an answer as to why this happened. This time they journey to the Emerald City in story, and to Venice in the real world, in pursuit of the mysterious Alchemist. They escape with a solution, many more questions, and a new ally in the Alchemists’ daughter Alessia de la Porta.
The Treehouse Library is the penultimate tale and focuses even more on Milo, who sneaks away from Pages & Co. with Alessia, to find a cure for his Uncle Horatio. Milo learns how to drive the Quip and goes in search of the fabled Botanist to put an end to the nefarious work of the Alchemist. Their search for the Botanist leads them to her home, a magical treehouse library in the northern woods of England, where they begin to learn more about Alessia’s father, but also more about Milo, and the foundations of bookwandering itself.
In this final adventure, The Last Bookwanderer, everything we know about bookwandering, imagination, and story is taken down to the roots. After circling around it for five books, we finally get the origin story. It is hard to talk about the finale of any series without giving too much away, but by now it is no secret to fans of the series that the final installment will involve some key mythological figures from Norse and British mythology. In fact, this book combines many sweet spots for me as a reader and lover of stories, even bringing in two of my favorite mythological characters, Loki and Merlin.
Tilly, Oskar, Alessia, and Milo are still working out how to prevent the Alchemist from executing his final plan, and how to untangle what he has already done, and save Pages & Co. In their search for the Books of Books we meet unexpected heroes, unexpected enemies, and even more unexpected allies. This book twists and turns far more than the previous installments and requires much more concentration to follow, but the characters that James introduces, and how they interact with our characters, is simply wonderful.
I love how as Tilly grows, James continues to expand and explode our understanding of book magic. Indeed, the final part of this series, The Last Bookwanderer explodes many of the things we thought we knew. Much like the ideas you have about the world as a child are exploded piece by piece as you grow into your adult life, this whole series brings us alongside Matilda as she learns about herself, the world around her, and the book world around her. Nothing will be the same at the end of this book, but that’s not a bad thing. Many of the moral questions that Tilly and her friends have raised in all of these stories are addressed here in ways that speak to me as a mom in America in 2024. Why are the rules the way that they are? Who came up with them? What are we really trying to protect?
This book really sees all of our young characters playing into their strengths and explores many of the aspects of this world that I have come to love. It is a great series about young friendship, the insecurities that come with that age, and the value of a good friend. I remain disappointed that Oskar’s character development was put on hold for several books as we got to know Milo, but really the only problem I have with this series is that it was published after I had already grown up! There are several series that I re-read every few years, and I am certain that this series will be one of them. I am also looking forward to reading them with my daughter, my very own Matilda Rose.
GeekMom received an advanced copy of this book for review purposes.
