Book Review: The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer

Title: The Book Witch

Author: Meg Shaffer

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Publication date: April 7, 2026

Genre: Fantasy

Just like Shaffer’s previous books, I really enjoyed The Book Witch. There’s something soft and magical about her books, and I love how they pay homage to books, the written word, and classic children’s literature. The Book Witch is for anyone who loved Nancy Drew, especially the much older books. There’s a lovely twist involving Nancy, but Rainy March is delightful on her own, and the twists to her own story were equally sweet.

Rainy March is a talented book witch, someone who can jump in and out of books for the purpose of fixing them and saving the stories from the Burners, a group that seeks to destroy books by burning them. She lives with her grandfather, having never known her father, after her mother’s unfortunate passing many years before. After falling in love with her favorite noir-style PI, a huge no-no for a book witch, her wings have been tightly leashed, until her grandfather disappears and it’s up to her to find him. With the help of her gorgeous PI, Duke, who she accidentally pulled out of his books.

I love the idea of being able to jump in and out of books. I actually wished to have seen more of this in the book, but the things Shaffer was able to do with what she gave herself to work with worked extremely well. The Book Witch manages to give Rainy quite an adventure and love story all while sampling several genres. It does stray into metafiction, which is far from my forte, so it twisted my head up a little. It also made the ending a little convoluted in a way that I didn’t quite enjoy as much considering it felt like a bit of a shift from the more magical first half. But I thought it was actually quite timely, considering it threw me out of the story, somehow perfectly mirroring the story for a truly astounding effect.

Rainy March is absolutely delightful. I loved her passion for books, and her incredible love for her grandfather. She felt real, which ended up being quite fascinating considering the twist regarding her character late in the story. But, for as much as she was able to do, all of her flaws and the things she was good at, sometimes she felt a little repetitive and a little stuck. I understand she’s faced discipline after falling in love with a book character, so that made her sometimes feel a little too stuck on the rules, but sometimes she was just stuck in her late mother’s shadow with an endless grief that kept an entire mystery from being solved for many years. Still, I really liked her character, and her romance with Duke was sweet. And I loved her cat, even if the cat didn’t feel too different from any other cat, which was kind of disappointing.

The Book Witch was such a simple story. Rainy is off looking for her missing grandfather and has to follow clues with her former lover at her side. But there are so many layers as the story winds its way between genres like fantasy and mystery. Each section is dedicated to a certain genre, and I liked how the story contained in that section both evoked that genre while also moving forward the story. It was a fun romp through the genres, even if things felt like they took a bit of an odd twist at the end that I, ultimately, could see how it worked but also didn’t really need or want in this book.

Still, this was such a lovely read. I love how smooth Shaffer’s stories and prose are. I don’t always love her protagonists, and, honestly, the antagonist felt a little half-baked, but I loved the way Nancy Drew featured in the story. I still love Nancy Drew, so it was quite a lot of fun to see how she tied in. Unfortunately, that twist was easy to see from the beginning, so it also felt like the story dragged it out. Then again, not much actually happened because the search for her grandfather somehow only felt like part of the story. There’s also Rainy learning and growing and her romance with Duke, and the book also had to say something about the different genres it covered while also introducing a bunch of interesting characters that did end up playing interesting roles but their roles were isolated. So it was fun, but also sometimes felt a little long considering the relatively simplistic story.

The Book Witch is a fun, lovely read. It’s easy to slide into it and fall in love with books all over again. The idea of being a book witch was fun, and I enjoyed how that job was explored. I did enjoy Rainy, and I loved her romance. The twists, despite being easy to figure out, happened at just the right moments. As a matter of fact, I think all the twists were very timely and they worked really well with where the story was at any given point. So, for as many small quibbles as I might have with The Book Witch, it also managed to absolutely amaze me with how perfectly everything worked together.

How many cups of tea will you need?

4 cups

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

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