The Book Witch

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The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer

Book Witch Rainy March receives a call while applying flea cream to her familiar, Koshka, a Russian blue cat who believes himself to actually be Russian, but her Pops, Sullivan March, beats her to the phone. It is most likely just the leader of the Ink and Paper coven, Dr. Regina Fanshawe, as he starts jotting down notes and putting in effort to keep her unable to read it. Rainy, unperturbed, asks him what job they received from their coven. While Pops is adamant that she can't do this job, Rainy reminds him that if she can handle working in the horror genre, which she has done for months by the way, she can handle anything. Pops sighs and tells her that he's sorry but the coven believes that it's too dangerous to send a young female book witch into gangland Chicago. After connecting the dots, Rainy realizes that the book he's talking about is not from any run of the mill series, but from the Duke of Chicago series, her absolute favorite mystery series that she's read millions of times. While trying to convince her grandfather she can handle it with her vast knowledge of the series, there is a knock at the door. 

To escape his granddaughter, Pops makes a run for the door. It is professor Dodsworth, a book witch that has been around longer than Rainy and her grandfather combined, and he has come with a bag that holds the mission details for Pops. Before anyone can react, Rainy grabs the bag and slams the door in poor professor Dodsworth's face. Rainy finds a Duke of Chicago novel in the bag and feels vindicated with her deduction. After some back and forth over her closeness to the series, or more so her love for the dreamy detective Duke himself, Pops caves and agrees to let Rainy take on the mission. Without a moment to spare and before any more pages disappear from the book, Rainy changes into a time appropriate men's outfit, grabs Koshka, and leaps into action and into the book. 

Inside the book, Rainy and Koshka arrive outside The Bathtub, the infamous speakeasy the Duke spends most of his time in. After making it through the bar and to a hidden room, Rainy finds him, the Duke of Chicago himself, tied up and passed out on the floor which is not what usually happens at this moment in the book. While pretending to be a male customer of the speakeasy, Rainy tries to wake him up, but surprise, he is already awake and can instantly tell she is a woman, so the flirty banter commences. 

After getting him untied and out of the speakeasy, Rainy gives the Duke an edited version of the situation as well as information on how he can complete the missing persons case he is working on to get the plot of his book back on track. However, it seems Duke doesn't care about much else aside from seducing her (not that she or any woman in her right mind would complain), but they then get interrupted by the man who kidnapped Duke who also happens to be Rainy's arch nemesis, X. As X monologues about how any books other than Shakespeare and Homer are trash and need to be burned to a crisp, he lets slip that the Duke is a fictional character in a fictional world and he plans to end them both. 

Instead of denying everything X says, Rainy doubles down and tells Duke everything, and as a result, he becomes self aware and unconsciously takes control of the book, causing an earthquake. X being the coward that he is, poofs away like a cheap magician, and Rainy is able to guide Duke into transporting them both somewhere safe. The somewhere safe ends up being Duke's office, followed shortly by his home, and the flirting begins again. The flirting turns into a deep conversation about life, family, reality, and then goes right back to flirting again. Before leaving the book world, now that it's safe from X, Rainy gives in to the Duke’s request to not erase his memories as she is supposed to do and leaves with a swoon-worthy kiss. 

After a job well done (minus the fact that she didn't erase Duke's memories of her being there), Rainy receives praise from the coven at repairing the book, but she can't help but miss Duke to the point where she gets mopey for weeks. Lucky for her, the universe seems to be on her side, and she wakes up one morning to find the Duke sitting at the end of her bed loving on her cat. It turns out that Rainy accidentally summoned him from his book after a particularly spicy dream about him. After a bit of a tumble in bed, the two decide to give a relationship a go, and also try to solve the mystery of how a fictional character and a real person can be together-together. They manage it for one glorious year, but unfortunately they get caught and are banned from seeing each other by the coven. Rainy is even banned from getting anywhere near his books in fear of her summoning him from sheer will alone. 

A full year has passed since seeing the Duke, and Rainy is still in the dog house with the coven. While fixing tragic gothic romance books, part of her punishment, she gets a call from apprentice book witch Penny, a sweet and bubbly witch dying to be her friend. Penny asks Rainy to come help her with a battle plan to catch a main character that one of X's associates released into the real world. At the bookstore, Penny, wearing rabbit ears, and coven head Regina Fanshawe, wearing a crown, greet Rainy. Before they can give Rainy the details on the mission, Rainy insists they explain their headwear. Penny is excited, one because she always is and two because it's Mad Hatter Day and everyone has to wear a hat. She gives Rainy a pair of ears, too, white ones to her brown. Now, time for the mission. 

Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is the character on the loose. Shocking no one, Elizabeth has taken a real shine to modern life and existing as a woman without a husband, so catching and sending her back isn't going to be easy. On her way to nab Elizabeth, Rainy stops at a small, abandoned little free library, loads it up with new books, and casts a spell on it to draw in books that people need, but she accidentally gets hit by the glittery dust from the spell. She then spots Elizabeth and goes up to her. After a pep talk and agreeing to let her see the sunset, Elizabeth goes willingly back into her book. Heroine met and job successfully completed, Rainy goes back to the bookstore.

Unfortunately, when Rainy gives her report, coven head Regina is pissed that she didn't instantly put Elizabeth back in the book and allowed her a few moments to watch the sunset. Rainy stands by her decision to treat Elizabeth with kindness and respect, as does apprentice Penny, but it doesn't stop Regina’s anger. She suspends Rainy from book witch duty and confiscates her umbrella (a book witch's wand and tool to enter books), telling her she can't treat fictional characters like real people and that they have rules for a reason, even though Rainy acts like they don't apply to her. Penny apologizes to Rainy, saying she'll try to talk Regina down, which Rainy appreciates, but she still heads home feeling down in the dumps. 

Penny catches up to her and decides to walk Rainy home. Along the way, they talk a little about Penny's home but more about Rainy's romance with Duke, that she lives with her grandfather, how she never really knew her mom, except that she was apparently an excellent book witch, and that she never knew her dad at all. In the process, they both realize that the mission Rainy's grandfather has been on for a week wasn't sanctioned by the coven. He is getting on in years and, though he's gone on long missions before, Rainy suddenly begins to worry about him. Before Penny leaves, she tells Rainy where in the bookstore her umbrella is, gifts her a book and tells her she's going back to her tiny home town to visit.

As Rainy enters her home, she is told by the housekeeper that they have been robbed, but the only thing taken was a very special Nancy Drew book left to Rainy by her deceased mother. Heartbroken and wishing her grandfather or Duke were there, Rainy sits and waits for the police to come. When there is a knock at the door, Rainy is surprised to see it is a delirious Duke who then immediately passes out. Rainy gets him on the couch then tries to find how he was summoned since all her Duke of Chicago books were confiscated to stop this exact thing from happening. 

It turns out the residual spell dust from the book-you-need charm from earlier plus Rainy's extreme yearning turned the book Penny gave her into a Duke of Chicago book and summoned the Duke. After falling asleep herself, Rainy wakes up to a now coherent Duke who has been hired by the housekeeper to find the stolen book and help find Rainy's missing grandfather. Rainy, scared that the coven will find out that he's here, tries to convince him to leave, but the Duke won't have it. He's been hired for a job after all.

Duke uses his fictional main character detective skills to discover where Pops hid the key to open the locked drawer of his desk where Rainy knows he keeps his mission journals. Inside however aren't mission journals but a log of his research into the book that Rainy's mom left her before she died, sure since then that she hid some sort of secret message inside. The last thing he wrote said he now knows what the book means, that it changes everything that they believed about stories, and that it means that Rainy and Duke could actually be together, but he can't tell them until he confirms everything. This must be his unsanctioned mission.

While absorbing that information, they get a call on the coven phone, and it's Pops! After rehashing what was in his notes, he tells them that he was right and that Rainy has to find the March Hare before the line cuts dead. After much discussion and flirtation, it's decided that they will go into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to talk to the March Hare, because what else could Pops have meant? They break into the coven's bookstore and steal back her umbrella to do it. 

Once in the store, while Rainy goes for her umbrella, Duke looks around. Umbrella recovered, they try to enter Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but it's magically locked, and before they can come up with a creative solution, a police officer shows up and they have to dive into a book quickly before getting caught. The Legends of King Arthur and Camelot is where they end up, and not long after arriving, X shows up with a cryptic warning and advice. He knows that Rainy is looking for the March Hare and that if she succeeds, she won't like what she discovers...about her mother. GASP! After he drops that bomb, he rides off into the sunset while Rainy and Duke go back to the bookstore, sure that the cop will be gone. 

They form a plan to enter Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from inside a different book, which you can do if you know books with extensive libraries, and choose The Great Gatsby. After a trip back home for a quick costume change, they are off to party with Gatsby, or more so with his library. After many drunkard filled rooms, they finally find the library and the book and dive in. While being disturbed by the many wonders of Wonderland, they make it to the Mad Hatter's tea party, only there is no one there, just a name card with Rainy's name on it and a talking teapot saying "wrong hare."

After some more book hopping, they make it back to Rainy's house and she collapses from exhaustion. After resting, they have heartfelt conversations about being together and what it would be like if Duke lived outside of his book in the real world, but that can't be. They also discuss the Nancy Drew book that Rainy's mom left her, which Duke kind of stole a version of from the bookstore while they were in there and the fact that there are kind of two Nancy Drews, one from the original publications and one from the updated versions published a little later. They discuss her mystery-solving skills and then decide that it feels like they are in a mystery themselves. Then they get an idea.

They decide that they will visit Medda Baker, local mystery author and owner of the coven's bookstore. Medda is not a book witch herself, but she is a part of the inner circle and who better to help solve a mystery than a mystery author? Medda invites them in and has them spill the tea on the situation, then together they brainstorm over who could be pulling the strings of everything. Medda tries to walk them through story plotting because they are curious when they will find out what they need to know. Medda decides they are somewhere near the midpoint of their story which is where they will learn something new to progress the plot. While talking through everything, they discover their something new. The Nancy Drew book that Duke accidentally burgled from the bookstore was Rainy's stolen book spelled to look like a new edition! Another mystery! 

As they leave Medda's house, Rainy and Duke discover the Portland motto on Rainy's license plate, "Pacific Wonderland." Does that technically mean they've been in Wonderland the entire time and the March Hare is somewhere here, not in a book? This gives Rainy a detective-worthy epiphany. They should go to the Enchanted Forest Park, where they have a Mad Hatter's Tea Party attraction. Uh oh, it's closed for the season.

Breaking into the theme park in its off season is relatively easy, but finding a clue involving the March Hare? Not so much. What they do find is a security guard who is not amused with their antics, until he is. Duke pretends they are there for a surprise proposal and the guard is all for it and he lets them leave free of any handcuffs, but also free of any clues. 

While trying to keep their spirits up after encountering another dead end, Duke running with the fact that they are actually engaged, Rainy has another epiphany. She believes they need to go into Through the Looking Glass and meet the March Hare in that book, but when they get back to Rainy's house, something weird happens. She sees movement in the mirror in the library, and when she touches it, she falls through. Now standing in a room full of mirrors, Rainy is rightfully confused, until she hears a voice ask "Who are you?" Rainy thinks the voice belongs to Medda Baker, a young Medda Baker, but that is still wrong. Her actual name is Maxine Blake, and she is the author of the Rainy March Book Witch series, and Rainy March is a fictional character. GASP!

After a quick faint from the realization, Maxine tells Rainy EVERYTHING. How she inserted herself as Medda Baker into the book series, to be meta, and that they are currently talking in her imagination. She then dives into her entire back story: her origin story of becoming a writer, her inspirations, creating all the Rainy March books, and the impact Rainy's books have had on the world. She also tells Rainy that she's dying and won't be able to finish her last book. She then shows Rainy an image of a woman named Jessa, who she calls The March Heir, the author Maxine has chosen to continue Rainy's story, but Jessa doesn't feel up to the task. Maxine wants Rainy to go out into the real world to convince Jessa to finish the book. She tells Rainy to find her husband Anthony because she will need his help. Before Rainy heads out on her mission, she and Maxine hug and say goodbye, for when Rainy arrives in the real world, Maxine will already be dead. 

After the emotional goodbye, Rainy lands in a women's restroom in the real world and meets a Rainy March book fan named Frankie, who saves her a seat in the library for Maxine’s funeral. They immediately hit it off and Rainy learns that Frankie wants to open a book store but is afraid to, but then the funeral starts. Jessa and Maxine's husband Anthony give sweet and touching eulogies before everyone leaves. As Anthony passes Rainy, she whispers to him that Maxine told her that he was her favorite story and he instantly knows who she is. He then ushers her to join him on the way to the graveyard. Anthony is glad to see that Rainy was able to make it to the real world and is in awe at seeing her in the flesh. 

When they arrive at the graveyard, Rainy goes over to Jessa and bluntly tells her that she is Rainy March and that Jessa needs to finish her book. Jessa, rightfully flabbergasted, starts asking all the reasonable questions, but Rainy interrupts her and asks to skip the explanation, it's magic, the end. After lots of back and forth with Jessa saying she's not good enough and Rainy saying suck it up and get to writing, Jessa finally agrees to finish the book.

Suddenly, Duke's voice breaks in and Rainy wakes up on the floor in his arms with the realization of who the actual March Hare is: Penny. Duke is confused, rightly so, so Rainy explains about Mad Hatter Day and Penny giving her white rabbit ears while she was wearing brown ones. Now they just have to find her, but she went back to her hometown and Rainy has no idea where that is. That's when Duke has his epiphany: Penny is a fictional character, too, just like he is. Penny isn't Penny. Penny is Nancy Drew.

They immediately jump into Rainy's mom's special copy of Nancy Drew and land outside her house. Penny, well Nancy, greets them and welcomes Rainy inside where they sit down to eat pie and share what they know. Rainy believes that this book is where her mom disappeared to for a year before becoming pregnant with her, and as Rainy says this, everything clicks into place. Nancy Drew is her sister, Carson Drew is her father, and Rainy herself is half a fictional character. Nancy then filled her in on how everything came to be. 

One day, Nancy was being chased by bad people and a woman with an umbrella saved her but got hurt in the process and got amnesia. The only thing she knew was her name because it was on her library card. She and Nancy's father fell in love and got married, but then Nancy figured everything out and told Rainy's mom which restored her memories. Unfortunately, she was already eight months pregnant with Rainy. She was only supposed to go back to the real world for a day to let her parents know that she was okay, but she never came back. Before she left, she warned Nancy to beware of the book witches and that if they came, they would try to erase their memories. Coven head Regina came and did just that, but it didn't work on Nancy because she was prepared for it. She went into the real world with a charmed umbrella made by Rainy’s mom, Nancy's stepmom, to try and find what happened, but  their mom had died by this point and Rainy was in her 20s. While book rules wouldn't let her tell Rainy the truth directly, she could at least set things in motion for her to discover the truth herself. Now Rainy knows who and what she is, and she can pick any book she wants to live in if she pleases. 

And then in walks Pops who has been at Nancy's house the entire time and joined in on Nancy's escapades. They try to decide if they need to reverse the memory charm on Carson Drew so he can know he has a daughter but also learn that lost his second wife, or if Rainy gets to know him without reversing it and learning who she really is. Rainy decides to let him stay ignorant a little longer because just meeting him, her father!, made her heart soar. While Rainy and Nancy have a heart to heart about missing their mom, X shows up. He now knows that Rainy is part fictional, so he feels brave enough to kill her, which only makes Rainy laugh. She's a self-aware fictional character and can take control of her story. She summons Dante's Inferno and pushes X into the book so he can literally burn in hell. 

Six months later, Carson Drew still doesn't know he's Rainy's father, but she visits often. Nancy visits Rainy in the real world, too, and they do some sisterly bonding. Coven head Regina gets stripped of her title and is sentenced to 10 years of removing price stickers off of books for all that she has done, and Pops becomes the new coven leader. As for Rainy, she is able to convince Medda Baker to accept the offer to write a new Duke of Chicago book and write her into it so she and Duke can finally be together in their own book. ​

Meanwhile, in the real world, Frankie, the person Rainy met at Maxine's funeral, goes into a book shop to pick up the new Maxine Blake - and Jessa Charming - Rainy March book. When she gets home, there's a knock at her door. It's the girl she met at the funeral, the one who looked like Rainy March. Rainy tells Frankie to open her bookstore and she agrees, but is confused. How is Rainy here right now? This is the real world, not a story. 

Or is it?!!