Fun Reads Friday: Unwritten Duology

“Always, for as long as she could recall, Gracie had the memory of fire. …

‘Story glimmers,’ Mom had explained. ‘Glimpses of things that would’ve happened if we hadn’t escaped Bondoff.'”

Unwritten and Rewritten, a duology by Tara Gilboy, introduces us to Gracie. Gracie is a book character who has escaped her story.

Unwritten starts off with Gracie in the real world battling with story glimmers which always involve fire, and often the image of a beautiful woman with long black hair and a crown on top of her head. She has been told that she and her mother escaped from the woman, Queen Cassandra, from the storybook land of Bondoff in order to save Gracie’s life. Mom refuses to answer many of Gracie’s questions until eventually, Gracie starts to doubt that mom is telling her the truth.

When Gracie hears that the author of their story, Gertrude Winters, will be presenting at a local bookstore, Gracie decides to pay her author a visit so she can get the answers she’s seeking. Gracie takes a piece of parchment from their old home with her and when Gertrude unwittingly signs it, she is magically transported to Bondoff. Gracie, along with her friends and family, will return to their storybook home where Gracie must fight to remember who she was in the real world as the story tries to force her to follow her plot.

In Rewritten, Gracie is trying to move on with her real-world life, but everything is once more thrown into chaos when Queen Cassandra kidnaps her. Gracie jumps into another story to escape, but unfortunately she jumps into a horror story with a beast that prowls around the woods of Blackwood Hall. Gracie knows someone at Blackwood Hall will be eaten alive by the beast, and she tries to convince the brother and sister living there to leave. When they refuse, Gracie must figure out how much she’s willing to acknowledge and accept of her old self in order to save her friends.

I loved these two books. Gracie is a fantastic character that you can really cheer for as she tries to discover who she wants to be. Readers can relate to her struggle between the good and evil inside us all. It’s hard to choose to do the right thing all the time, and Gracie makes plenty of mistakes and has to live with the consequences. While, I don’t believe these are “Christian” books, they remind me of Paul, who says in Romans 7 that he does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he wants to do. In the end, there is always grace and love for us all as illustrated in Gracie’s story as she is restored to her family and forgiven for her mistakes.

This book is creative, surprising, and a super fun ride for kids and parents alike. I highly recommend this duology. It is appropriate for middle grade readers and up.

(I received a complimentary copy of Rewritten for review purposes. And I liked it so much that I had to buy Unwritten so I could see how it all started. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)