I was told that I would love this book and that I really should read it by two different people, but the reason I actually did pick it up (eventually) was because the first line on the back cover was ‘Everything you can imagine is real.’ I can’t resist a challenge.

This is a dark and scary story set in a fairy tale world that David reaches through a hole in the garden wall – unfortunately, like so many fairy tales, there is no way back. He is met by the Wood-Cutter and pursued by wolves… but this is no innocent Babes-in-the-Wood story; there is no guarantee that Good will triumph and that Evil will be punished and the heroes and heroines are not always who you think they are – I will never think of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty in the same way again.

I really enjoyed The Book of Lost Things, and the people who recommended it to me were right – this kind of twisted fairy tale is my kind of book!

 Everything you can imagine is real

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own — populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.