Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet, #1)

by Roshani Chokshi

Suddenly the world she thought she knew had opened up, as if stage curtains had been yanked back to show her that there was so much more than what she’d imagined. There was magic. Secrets crouched in the dark. Characters from stories, like the ones she’d been told all her life, were taking off their masks and saying, I was never a tale, but a truth.

And yeah, maybe she had made an epic mistake, but that didn’t make her any less epic.

She may not have liked the books she’d had to read for school, but she’d loved the stories her mom had read aloud to her. Those tales had unlocked things that ordinary metal keys never could. A particularly good book had a way of opening new spaces in one’s mind. It even invited you to come back later and rummage through what you’d learned.