Most of us would love to have everything we have ever wanted to come true, but in “The Forgotten Book” by Mechthild Gläser, Emma Morgenroth learns that one should always be careful what they wish for.

Emma goes to school at Stolzenburg Castle, a German boarding school where her father just happens to be the headmaster. She and her friends return after their vacation and decide to use an old, unused library in the school as a hangout and a place to study, but first they have to clean up the area.

This is when Emma finds the book – an old, fraying, cloth-bound book with a strange horned man imprinted on the cover beneath layers of dust.

Emma takes the book with her, but it is forgotten for a time, due to the arrival of friendly Toby Bell and the sullen stranger, Darcy de Winter. However, Emma is once again drawn to the book and finds it to be a diary of sorts after closer inspection, though not of just one person. It contains writings, old and new.

Emma decides to write in the book, exaggerating the events of the day and adding in her own ideas. To her surprise, they begin to come true! But, that’s not all; the more she reads of the previous entries, the more she begins to realize that something more foreboding is going on at the castle and in the surrounding forest and that they are somehow linked to the secret passages and disappearances that she has unearthed.

She and Darcy set out to find out what happened to Darcy’s lost sister and discover how it connects to the deeply troubling passages Emma come across in the book.

Gläser has this magical way of keeping up the sense of unease, trepidation and confusion until the last few pages of her novels and is able to flawlessly intertwine not just the tale of Emma, but also an underlying plot of intrigue and fantasy together to keep theories swirling until the last few pieces fall into place.