Book Pick for September 2026
The Book Witch by Meg Schaffer
As a child, I lived in books. They were so real to me as I began to read on my own that I practically thought of The Babysitters Club as my best friends. I started my own neighborhood play group each summer based on the books and had a Kid Kit that I would bring when I babysat.
It was so visceral to me, that when I read ahead in A Wrinkle in Time in reading in fourth grade, I was so creeped out by the pulsating brain image that I made a deal with my teacher that I would read all of the Anne of Green Gables books rather than read that book in class. It was another series where I knew the characters as well as my own small-town players. I even convinced my best friend to tour PEI tourist traps ode to Anne.
This concept is the center of The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer. This book had been recommended by multiples sites, and when my former mentor and teacher raved about it, I added it to my library queue. I wish I would have simply bought it immediately.
The word “witch” pushed me away. Not that I am overly religious or against witches, I just had been burned by other books that focused heavily on the occult of witchcraft
This is FAR from that. Think Harry Potter for the book nerd.
There have been several books in the past few years for book lovers—in which the protagonist gives way for book lovers to frolic in their favorite tales. My earlier book pick this year, The Astral Library by Kate Quinn, was one of them. What stands out about The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer is her departure from the high brow classics to the mass market fiction which has saturated markets for years for our book witch’s obsession.
Rainy March, her name not a weather forecast, is a young Book Witch living with her grandfather. In the storied tradition of great heroes, she has an enigmatic origin story. Seemingly spurned by her mother and raised be her father and grandfather she follows in their footsteps into the world of Book Witchery – saving the characters in books from the “burners,” evil agents that sneak into books to destroy the stories from within.
Rainy’s great downfall as a Book Witch is her obsession with the detective novels of the character known as the Duke of Chicago. When she finagles a trip to his series from the head witch, and with a twist of her umbrella on a period in the book, she find herself entrenched in a tale she knows all too well. And, despite herself, breaks one of the major rules of book witches: she falls in love.
With that “minor” infraction, all the wheels begin to fall off the world that Rainy has known – and the book witch legacy.
Dreamers, book lovers, Potheads (The Harry Potter kind) …do yourself a favor and join Rainy in the world of Book Witches.