Selby lives in an apartment above her parents’ bookstore. It sounds to me like she’s living the dream. Not so much, though. Selby’s not like the rest of her family. She doesn’t do well in school and she’s not a fan of books.

She’s pretty well caught up on all of the soap operas she binges but that doesn’t count as an accomplishment to her parents. And she may have forgotten to do her homework for the past six months.

Now her binge watching days are over and she has a hobbit for a tutor. Okay, maybe not literally but she has trouble seeing Dan, one of her older brother’s friends, as anything else.

A good author can make words come alive but not usually to this extent. Before they know what’s happening, Selby and Dan are in the story.

‘There are stranger things in heaven and earth than in our imaginations, Selby.’

In spending time in the pages of Hamlet, themes of grief, loss and mental health are explored.

‘It’ll be fun. You might even learn something.’

Speaking of, you may stumble across some accidental learning.

I’m not quite sure where this book fits. It reads like a middle grade book but the main character is 16 and my library categorised it as YA. If this had been published when I was a kid, I probably would have read it when I was 10 or 11. I usually liked reading about kids who were older than I was but the Shakespeare would have tripped me up.

If you’ve somehow made it this far without reading Hamlet or at least picking up on the basics of the story by osmosis, you’re in for some major spoilers.

This book is a reader’s dream come true, playing with the magic of bringing a book to life. If I had the ability to transport myself into a fictional world, I probably wouldn’t be choosing one with such a high body count, but Selby didn’t get to choose her English homework.

‘I told you if you saw the play performed live it would make more sense to you.’

I couldn’t read a book like this without thinking about the stories I’d choose to spend a few chapters in if I had the chance. The chocoholic in me wants to hide out in Wonka’s factory for a while. Kid me would have wanted to live inside The Neverending Story, after the whole Nothing business was fixed. Ultimately, though, I think I’d want to spend with my kindred spirit, Anne Shirley Cuthbert.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Independent Publishers Group and Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia, for the opportunity to read this book.